Uncovering regularities: On bare and evaluated controllers in Tigrinya

Abstract

The "flexibility" of gender in Tigrinya is uncovered by (i) setting a value for gender for each noun at the lexical level (i.e. bare controllers) and (ii) analysing gender shifts as signals for evaluations (i.e. evaluated controllers). The analysis is formalized as lexical rules which change the value of gend and add an elementary predication in the rels list.

L2 French learning by Eritrean refugee speakers of Tigrinya

“…Nevertheless, our data depart from the literature in two respects: a high rate of agreement errors with animate nouns, and the overuse of the feminine rather than the masculine. Interestingly, both divergences are related to the way gender agreement is encoded in Tigrinya (Brindle & Müller, 2006; Dyer, 2019). First, most nouns in Tigrinya, even those referring to animate entities, have flexible gender based on semantic evaluation.…”

“…The default gender is masculine when biological gender is not specified (e.g., baby; Gebregziabher, 2013). The gender of inanimate nouns is variable, in that it can change according to semantic features such as size, power and respect (Brindle & Müller, 2006; Dyer, 2019). Interestingly, even animate nouns can undergo gender shift in order to express these semantic variants (Dyer, 2019, pp.…”