1 Introduction

RAYMOND HICKEY GENDER IN MODERN IRISH THE SURVIVAL OF A GRAMMATICAL SUBSYSTEM1 1 Introduction Grammatical gender is a system of co-occurrence restrictions and correspondences between members of different word classes in a language (Ibrahim 1973, Roca 1989). Thus to say a noun is (grammatically) feminine is a shorthand for stating that in that language a certain marker, say an article, co-occurs with certain nouns and requires a specific form of pronoun when, for discourse reasons, a pronoun is used which is co-referential with a noun classified as ‘feminine’. Other correspondences may exist, for instance there may be adjectives or past participles which require different endings depending on gender affiliation.2 This is the case in the Romance languages, for example. The traditional labels used for gender classification – masculine, feminine and neuter – are derived from the fact that specific forms of determiners are associated with masculine or feminine beings or with objects when used with nouns denoting these, this providing the tripartite division one has in German, Russian, etc. Other labels could equally well be used, even opaque ones like ‘X’, ‘Y’, ‘Z’, as they would not be any less analytically suitable than the existing labels which distinguish nouns along the axes of sex and/or animacy, irrespective of whether these categories apply extra-linguistically to the referents of the nouns or not. The Indo-European languages which still have grammatical gender show agreement requirements first and foremost with determiners, even in languages like Russian which have no articles; in these cases it is the adjectives, demonstrative and possessive pronouns which show gender distinctions (Priestly 1983). However, there are other languages, such as Irish, which show gender agreement on verbal nouns which indicate by this means the gender of the direct object (see below). 1 My thanks go to my colleague Dr. Brian Ó Catháin, Department of Modern Irish, National University of Ireland, Maynooth who commented extensively on an earlier draft for which I am grateful. Needless to say, any shortcomings are my own. 2 The issue of how gender arose in the first place is beyond the scope of this article, but see Greenberg (1978) and Fodor (1959). 2 Reduction and loss of gender In a similar fashion to other Indo-European languages, Irish has reduced the number of grammatical distinctions from three to two.3 This occurred in Irish by the demise of the neuter gender and not, as in the Scandinavian languages or Dutch, by a merging of former masculine and feminine, to the utrum category or common gender4 (of de-words) respectively. The formal distinction between the inherited Indo-European masculine and neuter genders was already weak in Old Irish (McCone 1994: 92f.) and had been lost in other Celtic languages, such as Breton. The masculine and neuter genders merged in the Middle Irish period (900-1200) (Breatnach 1994: 241) so that by Early Modern Irish (1200-1600) there were only two formally distinct genders, masculine and feminine. Remnants of the old neuter were, however, still found in fixed forms, e.g. in placenames. A structural consequence for a language which collapses a former distinction of neuter and masculine to the masculine alone is that this gender generally becomes used in so-called ‘default’ situations, either those where speakers do not know the gender of something being discussed or where a semantically empty, dummy subject is used with a verb, for example with expressions indicating weather states (see 3.6 below). As in other inflecting languages, Irish has gender-distinguishing pronouns. This means that in both anaphoric and cataphoric contexts, the gender of nouns being referred to can be gleaned from gender-specific deictic elements, e.g. demonstrative or personal pronouns. Hence gender plays an important role in reference tracking (Corbett 1990) in Irish as it does in languages like German or Russian, for instance. 3 Predictability of gender For both previous stages of Irish and the present-day language it is true that there is a certain degree of predictability for gender, going on the phonological shape of the word (cf. Hickey 1999 for an analysis of this in German). However, many diachronic developments in Irish have led to opacity with formally transparent genders so that the level of overall predictability has been lowered. Nonetheless, in the present-day language gender is still observed by native speakers, but frequently not so by the much greater number of non-native users of the language. 3 Trudgill (1999: 149f.) suggests that the reduction in gender distinctions can be due to koineisation effects in the development of standard varieties of language. He also suggests that this reduction is a feature of adult language use, the retention of gender distinctions being, by implication, a characteristic of child language. 4 Belgian dialects in general tend to maintain a formal distinction between masculine and feminine nouns, though West-Flemish is closer to Netherlands usage in preferring the common gender. 3.1 Natural and grammatical gender Irish has natural gender whereby beings which are biologically masculine or feminine are also so grammatically, e.g. bean (f) ‘woman’, fear (m) ‘man’, nia (m) ‘nephew’, neacht (f) ‘niece’. Agent nouns are grammatically masculine, even though in some cases the referent may be feminine. The following are some typical examples. (1) tiománaí ‘driver’ iománaí ‘hurler’ marcach ‘rider’ bacach ‘beggar’ ceannaire ‘leader’ aire ‘minister’ múinteoir ‘teacher’ rinceoir ‘dancer’ scoláire ‘scholar’ baicéir ‘baker’ saighdiúir ‘soldier’ dochtúir ‘doctor’ Masculine gender holds here, although the default interpretation of a noun may at times still be feminine, e.g. rúnaí ‘secretary’. Furthermore, nouns which are inanimate, but formed on the pattern of an animate group, show masculine gender, e.g. loisceoir (m) ‘incinerator’ analogous to bádóir (m.) ‘fisherman’, foilsitheoir (m.) ‘publisher’, etc. There are some exceptions to the equivalence of natural and grammatical gender. For instance, stail ‘stallion’ is feminine and a borrowing from English (with apocope of the second syllable). The palatal coda which resulted may have been the phonological trigger for feminine gender assignment. A more common noun is cailín ‘girl’ which is masculine because the diminutive ending -ín originally demanded masculine gender. This is basically still true although in many cases the combination of stem + ín is not viewed as a diminutive,5 e.g. spailp (f) ‘term, period’ but spailpín (m) ‘seasonal labourer’. Here one can see a feature of Irish, also found in other languages, that productive endings demand a single gender, consistently or overwhelmingly so. The reason for this probably lies in the productive nature of endings: when one can be used at liberty by speakers in ad hoc situations, then the gender assignment must be unambiguous, e.g. in German (in both the standard and the dialects) a diminutive ending, -chen (in the standard), -lein, -li in south-west and Swiss dialects always makes a noun neuter6 as in das Mädchen, das Mägdlein, etc. ‘the girl’. Where the gender assignment of an ending is unpredictable, the cases where it occurs are limited and lexicalised, e.g. German -nis which is sometimes neuter, das Verhängnis ‘the disaster’ 5 At least in lexicalised cases, cf. paidir (f) ‘prayer’ but paidrín (m) ‘rosary’. Where -ín is added productively to a base the gender of this is retained, e.g. smig (f) ‘chin’, smigín (f) ‘chin’ (Ó Siadhail 1984: 173). For more details of the situation with –ín, see de Bhaldraithe (1990). 6 The correctness of this interpretation can be seen from other examples, e.g. die Mär ‘story; rumour, made-up story’ but das Märchen ‘fairy tale’. and sometimes feminine, die Erlaubnis ‘the permission’. The assignment of grammatical gender to objects is not semantically motivated in Irish, nor would it seem to be the case7 in those other languages which share this type of gender distinction (on French, see Surridge 1995: 12). Nonetheless, modes of conveyance (boats, cars, buses), and often technical objects in general, to which people, especially males, feel a certain attachment, take feminine pronominal referents irrespective of their grammatical gender, e.g. Is húicéir an-bhreá í [is hooker.MASC very-nice she] ‘She is a lovely hooker’ (traditional turf-carrying sailing boat). This is a feature which Irish shares with English and the latter may be the ultimate source of feminine gender assignment with such nouns. 3.1.1 Gender variation in Irish Variation is found with gender across dialects just as with other linguistic parameters. For instance, the noun ainm ‘name’ is feminine in Southern Irish (Munster) but masculine elsewhere. The noun loch ‘lake’ is feminine in Western Irish (Connemara) but masculine elsewhere. In Cois Fharraige Irish (a sub-dialect of Western Irish) the word leabhar ‘book’ can be feminine. In addition to this interdialectal variation many words may themselves be masculine but have feminine pronominal reference in standard Irish8. In general such cases denote modes of conveyance, e.g. meaisín ‘machine’, soitheach ‘boat’, carr ‘car’, capall ‘horse’, but there may be some other instances as well, e.g. Ba dhaor an clog í (not é) ‘It was an expensive clock’ (Ó Dónaill 1977: 688). Here it would seem that the semantics of the words trigger the use of the feminine pronoun. A quite different situation is that with some nouns which are feminine but take a masculine article, e.g. áit ‘place’+ é (not í), e.g. Sin é an aít ar rugadh mé ‘That’s the place I was born’ (see section 4.5 Gender disagreement for further discussion). 3.2. Generalisations about the phonological shape of words There would appear to be a link between the syllable rhyme of a word, especially the coda, and gender assignment.

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