Em Stefanie sei Mann – Frauen im Neutrum

Busley, Simone; Fritzinger, Julia

doi:10.1515/9783110589122-008

Cited by 4 publications

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“…This can best be explained by the historical development of the language, which is not the topic of this article. As pointed out by Busley & Fritzinger (2018), the original neuter-feminine choice was governed by the social status of the girl or woman denoted: unmarried, dependent women of low social status who belonged to the domain of a patriarch were usually assigned neuter gender, whereas married women and mothers of high social status were assigned the feminine. Thus, the gender system represented vertical social deixis.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The project was conducted from 2015 to 2020 and funded by the German Research Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg (D-A-CH procedure). It resulted in four doctoral theses and various articles in linguistics (Busley & Fritzinger 2018;2020;Martin 2019;Klein & Nübling 2019;Baumgartner 2019;Baumgartner et al 2020;Baumgartner & Christen 2021). The sections that follow offer a brief presentation of the most important findings.…”

Section: Sociopragmatic Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Referring to women using feminine and neuter gender

Busley

Nübling

2021

NOSO

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In German, gender is a strongly grammaticalized category and has the function of indicating grammatical agreement between syntactic units. Usually, each noun is assigned one of three grammatical genders. In standard German, nouns denoting women are typically feminine. However, Luxembourgish and some German dialects show a peculiarity: here, the gender of female first names and other parts of speech (e.g. pronouns) referring to women can be both feminine and neuter, depending on the nature of the interpersonal relationship between the speaker and the female referred to. In these varieties, gender assignment is governed by sociopragmatic factors. Sociopragmatic gender assignment is a result of de-grammaticalization, which is reflected in both syntagmatic and paradigmatic gender variability. The study shows that there is considerable diatopic variation in the use and function of gender in references to women. In some dialects, the neuter has become the default gender of female first names; this is a case of re-grammaticalization.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sociopragmatic Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

Referring to women using feminine and neuter gender

Busley

Nübling

2021

NOSO

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“…Until now, there have been a few contributions on neuter gender assignment in reference to female persons: Christen (1998) has made the first contribution to this topic with a focus on Swiss German dialects. Besides, more recently, important first investigations mostly focusing on German dialects have been carried out by Nübling et al (2013), Nübling (2015Nübling ( , 2017 and Busley and Fritzinger (2018). In addition, Döhmer (2016) provides a small study on the socio-pragmatic asymmetries in reference to female persons in Luxembourgish.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hattorsi? Neuter and feminine gender assignment in reference to female persons in Luxembourgish

Martin

2019

STUF - Language Typology and Universals

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In Luxembourgish, feminine as well as neuter gender can be assigned to female persons. Here, female first names are morphologically treated as neuter and therefore trigger neuter gender on their targets (e.g. definite article, personal pronoun). Last names referring to women, however, are feminine and take feminine targets respectively. While the use of neuter and feminine in prototypical and invariable reference contexts are well-known, morphological conflicts often arise regarding more complex name types (e.g. female first name + last name) leading to different degrees of variation between both genders. Building especially upon previous findings by Döhmer (2016), the present contribution offers a first extensive empirical analysis on the use of neuter and feminine personal pronouns considering different female referents as well as familiarity, the referent’s and the speaker’s, as decisive (socio-pragmatical) factors for gender assignment. The results are based on elicited data retrieved from an online survey and audio recordings collected by means of the Luxembourgish language app Schnëssen and allow a quantification of the phenomenon going beyond previous contributions and descriptions in reference grammars. The apparent-time analysis, carried out in order to identify potential tendencies in language change, suggests a preference for neuter pronominalization for younger speakers of Luxembourgish in variable reference contexts.

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neutering neuter – grammatical gender and the dehumanisation of women in German

Nübling

Lind

2021

JLD

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Grammatical gender in German has traditionally been described as a rather arbitrary system (Helbig and Buscha 1988). This is not the case in regard to terms of person reference, where natural gender assignment is the norm: Masculine and feminine grammatical gender largely correlate with the extralinguistic assignment of male and female gender. Neuter gender predominantly denotes inanimate entities (Köpcke and Zubin 1996, 2009). The use of neutral gender in reference to women nevertheless has a long history in German, usually with pejorative connotations (Köpcke and Zubin 1996, 2009). Historically, this can be illustrated in relation to nouns, pronouns and articles: 1 By neuter nouns denoting ‘socially incomplete’ women, e.g. das Weib ‘woman (archaic), hag, n.’, das Luder ‘hussy, n.’ and in the increased use of neuter eliciting diminutives in reference to female individuals, e.g. das Mädchen ‘girl, n.’, das Fräulein ‘miss, n.’ (Nübling 2017). 2 Through the use of neuter pronouns and neuter articles in combination with female names in a number of German dialects, e.g. das Emma, es ‘the (n.) Emma, it’ (Busley and Fritzinger 2018). In contemporary standard German, the use of neuter articles and pronouns instead of feminine ones seems to be used as a discursive tool to denigrate and dehumanise women whose gender performance does not conform with hegemonic concepts of femininity. This paper focuses on the intentional manipulation of grammatical gender in reference to women as a tool of degradation and dehumanisation and outlines the historical development of neuter forms of reference in contexts where feminine would be expected.

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Em Stefanie sei Mann – Frauen im Neutrum

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Referring to women using feminine and neuter gender

Referring to women using feminine and neuter gender

Hattorsi? Neuter and feminine gender assignment in reference to female persons in Luxembourgish

neutering neuter – grammatical gender and the dehumanisation of women in German

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