Gender ‘Translation’ And Distributed Gender: Evidence From The Norwegian DP And Language Mixing*

Abstract

AbstractTaking as our point of departure an important distinction between gender as a semantic/conceptual property and gender as a formal morphological property, we argue, assuming a broadly Distributed Morphology/exoskeletal theoretical approach, that formal gender languages, for gender to be visible to the inflectional system, exploit a mechanism that translates semantic/conceptual gender into formal gender by valuing an unvalued formal gender feature. We propose that even though all formal gender features on the DP spine are initially unvalued, only the lowest locus of the unvalued gender feature is valued by the translation mechanism. Subsequent gender agreement is accomplished by probe – goal valuing. Next, we inquire about the exact locus of the lowest formal gender feature. We argue first that gender in the Norwegian DP is a formal feature on an already existing functional head. Then, based on Norwegian – English language mixing, we argue that the lowest locus of the formal gender feature may vary depending on the size of the non‐gender chunk mixed from English. In other words, there is no designated functional head where the lowest gender feature is always generated, and the formal unvalued gender feature at any functional head can in principle be the lowest formal gender feature.