Gender assignment in loanwords in Jordanian Arabic

Abstract

This study examines gender assignment in 531 English loanwords in Jordanian Arabic. Results show that the most common gender in the corpus is the masculine and the most important factor that determines the gender of the adapted loanword is the phonological/phonetic form of the loanword while semantic factors play a minor role. Most importantly, the paper provides evidence that the masculine, which is also morphologically unmarked, is the default gender in JA and probably in Arabic in general. In other words, Jordanian Arabic native speakers perceive English loan nouns as masculine unless strong evidence suggests otherwise. The paper contributes to studies on gender assignment in both Arabic and world languages by shedding light on the mechanisms of the complicated process of gender assignment in Jordanian Arabic. The study concludes with a number of implications for gender assignment in Arabic and second language acquisition of Arabic.