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Optimizing Polish Gender: a Preliminary Analysis

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Optimizing Polish Gender: A Preliminary Analysis Master’s Thesis Name: Agnieszka Gimżewska Student number: 5627893 Programme: Linguistics (Research Master) Department: Department of Language and Literature Faculty: Faculty of Humanities University: University of Amsterdam Thesis supervisor: René Genis Second reader: Arjen Versloot Date: September 2019 Abstract This thesis is about the grounds on which singular nouns of Contemporary Polish may be considered to belong to a particular gender category with the perspective of an adult native speaker in mind. The variety of the language investigated is Standard Polish spoken in most of the Polish territory. The vantage point is a three-way gender division into masculine, feminine, and neuter reflected largely in an underlying three-way formal distinction instantiated by the nominative singular (of nouns) (even where currently Polish morphophonology-phonetics makes a four-way contrast). In Stefańczyk (2007) more or less loosely stated rules and tendencies which generate grammatical gender of nominative singular nouns (native and loaned) found in Słownik języka polskiego (Doroszewski, 1958-1969) and in Uniwersalny słownik języka polskiego (Dubisz, 2003) amount to twenty nine pages and relate the grammatical gender of nouns to their semantics as well as to their phonological and morphological conditioning (involving derivation and compounding) in the nominative singular case form. In this thesis the rule set which generates pre-syntactic gender of nouns listed in Słownik języka polskiego PWN (Drabik et al. 2014) amounts to one page only. It was possible to show that nearly 99% of GA in my sample can be accounted for by a theory which recognizes (1) a markedness hierachy of masculine over feminine and neuter, and feminine over neuter and (2) a set on non-ranked (Steinmetz, 1986, 2006) morphophonological-phonetic and semantic gender assignment rules. A preliminary Optimality Theory analysis of gender assignment in Contemporary Standard Polish is presented using Steinmetz’ (1986) fundamental work and Rice’s continuation (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006). Keywords: Grammatical gender; Gender assignment; Phonological gender assignment rules; Morphological gender assignment rules; Semantic gender assignment rules; Optimality Theory; Standard Polish The following abbreviations, symbols and other conventions are used throughout: Acc.=Accusative, aff.=affectionate, ANIM=animate noun, [+ANIM]=the referent is marked for animacy, arch.=archaic, coll.=colloquial, CSP=Contemporary Standard Polish, dim.=diminutive, E.=English, f/F=feminine gender, [+FEMALE]=noun referring to a biological female, G.=German, GA=gender assignment, Gen.=Genitive, I.=Italian, L.=Latin, m/M= masculine gender, [+MALE]=noun referring to a biological male, [-MALE, -FEMALE]=the referent (human and non-human) has a sexless connotation, n/N = neuter gender, Nom.=Nominative, obs.=obsolete, pej.=pejorative, Pl.=Plural, Sg.=Singular. Throughout the thesis, the noun entries are in Nom.Sg. case, unless otherwise stated. Also note the use of bracket conventions when citing Polish nouns <>, {}, //, and []: <o> is a grapheme, {-uni-} is morphological (derivational), /o/ is phonemic/phonological, and [ɔ] is phonetic (how the sound is pronounced). For the morphophonological-phonetic specification of noun entries in Nom.Sg. case form, the following order will be applied (e.g. dziadunio dziad{-uni-}/+o/ [ʥad-uɲ+ɔ] “grandpa, (aff.)”). 1. Main claims and plan This is a study into the grounds on which singular nouns of CSP may be considered to belong to a particular gender category with the perspective of an adult native speaker in mind.1 Research has established that nouns are not arbitrarily assigned to their grammatical gender categories (e.g. Corbett, 1991; Comrie, 1999). In Russian, traditionally recognized as having three grammatical genders, such nouns as for example дом “house” and Фрукt “fruit” have a fixed masculine gender in the lexicon. In German, which also has a three-gender system, both haus “house”, and obst “fruit” are neuter. These are just a few examples, but the explanation of what mechanism is responsible for GA to nouns in a given language had not yet been given, until the late 1980’s when Steinmetz, a prominent researcher in the area of GA, took a stand on this issue. 1 The GA of plural nouns in the nominative form in CSP is left out of consideration in the present study. See Rice (2005, p. 2) for a comment on Optimality Theory based plural GA. 2 Building on the foundations laid by Steinmetz (1986), Rice (2006) writes as follows: ‘[…] Languages frequently present nouns that show surface violation of their GA principles. This gives the superficial appearance of GA tendencies - rather than absolutes - and may cast doubt on the enterprise of gender category prediction. […] we demonstrate that mere tendencies on the surface do not indicate the absence of reliable GA principles. Instead, tendencies are simply the expected consequence of resolution among conflicts between violable constraints […].’ Rice (2006, p. 1395) In other words, there is a system behind the assignment of nouns to their gender categories across languages. This system, proposed by Steinmetz and initially tested only on German in the 1980’s turned out to rely on a default hierarchy of gender categories which underlies the operations of language- specific phonological, morphological, and semantic rules (after Onysko 2007, p. 155). As far as the interaction of GA rules is concerned, the theory presupposes a non-ranking according to whether the rules are semantic, morphological, or phonological (Onysko, 2007, p. 155). If a rule applies, it always provokes its respective gender, regardless of the existence of other rules. If rules triggering different gender apply at the same time, they all “count” equally and they have the same associative strength (see further Section 7 for information on GA conflict resolution). This is how Rice recalls the initial stage of developing this theory of GA: ‘[…] We remember the period in which his [Steinmetz’] theory was being developed, including a day when he proudly announced that he had been through an entire German dictionary, and had identified only eight nouns that defied the predictions of his approach - and of course he had explanations for these, as well. We also note with interest that the theory presented there anticipated all of the key properties of Optimality Theory as developed in the 1990s: Violable constraints, hierarchical constraint ranking, competition among candidates […].’ (Rice et al. 2010) Interesting results were also obtained for Russian (Rice, 2004, 2005, 2006). On the basis of gender information of the 53,892 nouns found in Obratnyj Slovar’ Russkogo Jazyka [Reverse Dictionary of the Russian Language] (Lazova et al. 1974), Rice incorporates morphological rules related to the declinability and indeclinability of nouns, among others, to account for GA (for masculine-feminine- neuter division).2 Under the heading ‘Some Russian GA rules’, Rice (2004, 2005) proposes the following 2 As a preliminary remark, it should be pointed out that such an approach to GA (empirically testifiable by means of carefully designed experiments) stands in sharp contrast to the premises in this study (see further Section 3). For Rice (2004, 2005, 2006), the masculine-feminine-neuter division is evidenced in the grammar of Russian in 3 rule set fragment: morphological (inflectional class) rules: -a=f, -o=n, -e=n, indec.=n; semantic rules: +male=m, +female=f, +animate=mf and claims that this simple system of rules along with a default hierarchy m > f > n, suffices to account for the vast majority of GA in Russian.3 Rice (2004, 2005) claims that as much as 97% of nouns in Russian may be accounted for in this way.4 The variety of the language under analysis in this study is Contemporary Standard Polish (henceforth, CSP), known as the Cultural Variant, or the Polish Literary Language. CSP is taught in schools and used in the media, and is uniform throughout Poland. In the north, there is a small community speaking Kashubian, nowadays recognized as a separate (regional) language. In a few regions, there are groups of people who still speak dialects of Polish at home, for example the Tatra Mountains’ highlanders use the Podhalanian Dialect, and the Silesian Dialect is spoken in south- western Poland. However, most of these people can also speak the standard variety of Polish. Generally speaking, regional variations of spoken Polish involve minor phonetic and lexical differences.5 CSP is also an interesting language from the point of view of gender studies as the interplay of GA rules is intricate. Not only do rules interact, but they also compete. The conflict is usually resolved, the Nom.Sg. case (i.e. gender is expressed on adjectives, possessives and demonstrative pronouns, as well as verbs in the past tense, and it is grammatically marked on the noun: its semantics and/or its (in)ability to decline) (compare with Corbett, 1991, assignment based on a single form in phonological criteria). Rice (2004, 2005, 2006) fails to consider the Russian noun itself as a place where pre-grammar classification takes effect, despite the fact that Russian has been frequently cited as a language which has developed (largely) overt gender marking on nouns (i.e. there is a strong correlation between the morphophonological properties of nouns in the nominative singular and their gender, e.g. Rodina and Westergaard, 2017, p. 199) (see however a special case учитель “teacher”, vs. учительница “female teacher”, etc., and further complexities involving кале́ка “cripple”-type nouns). Note also that dictionary grammatical GA made by lexicographers may be normative in nature and hence not reflect actual usage. 3 Rice’s formulation for Russian is that “nouns ending in a segmentable morpheme +a are feminine” and this formulation is “a notational variant of the claim that nouns of the 2nd declension are feminine” (Rice, 2006, p. 1401). Accordingly, the (segmentable) inflectional ending +o, and the (segmentable) inflectional ending +e in the nominative singular typically assign neuter gender.
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