David A. Zubin

Affect classification in the German gender system

Abstract Gender has traditionally been cited as a paradigm instance of the arbitrariness of language. This paper builds on previous evidence provided by the authors showing that gender classification is not arbitrary in German, but rather forms a complex system based on phonetic and semantic organizing principles. Within the affect lexicon a set of compounds formed with the last member - mut is first experimentally evaluated and shown to have masc -gender or fem -gender assignment depending on the affective Extroversion or Introversion of the noun. The resulting classification is then applied to nouns with the derivational suffix - nis , which are shown to have a strong association between fem -gender and Introverted affect. Following this the classification is applied to a thorough sample of 177 affect nouns drawn from the entire lexicon. Here there is also shown to be a strong association between masc -gender and Extroverted affect, and between fem -gender and Introverted affect. An additional group of fem -gender nouns expressing arousal is uncovered. Thus the distribution of gender in the general affective lexicon supports the experimental results based on mut -compounds. Finally, historical evidence shows that (a) a number of nouns have undergone formal or semantic changes, and (b) a number of borrowed or newly coined nouns have received gender assignments in accordance with the hypothesized affect classification. It is concluded that the semantic organization of gender in the affective lexicon has a prototype structure as depicted e.g. by Rosch (1977).

Nominalphrasen ohne lexikalischen Kopf Zur Bedeutung des Genus für die Organisation des mentalen Lexikons am Beispiel der Autobezeichnungen im Deutschen

Car names and car-referring expressions are analysed such as (a) “der Berlingo Multispace Ocean,” with characteristic default masculine gender in spite of the absence of a gender-bearing head; (b) “der Audi A3 TDI Ambition Automatik” with default masculine gender despite the presence of an apparent divergent gender-bearing head; and (c) “das weise BuickElektra-Cabrio” with divergent gender (feminine or neuter) conforming to its apparent gender-bearing head. These cause special problems for both a linguistic theory of lexeme-based gender assignment, and a psycholinguistic production theory for gender percolation to NPs. We suggest a motivated basis for considering types (a) and (b) to be syntactically headless, as opposed to type (c). Furthermore, we propose that NP types (a) and (b) receive their default masculine gender assignment through a pragmatic projection directly linked to the conceptualization of the referent as a car (and not from any Lemma in the NP), whereas NP type (c) inherits its gender from a Lemma that is lexically coded for gender; this suggests a revision to Bock & Levelt (1994) style production models. We support these claims with an extensive sample of car-referring expressions from a newspaper database. Finally, we suggest that lexical material in car-referring expressions such as “Siena,” “Oktavia,” or “518i” are instances of field-external lexemes which are either borrowed from another semantic field, or are not resident in any field at all; and thus do not bear lexical gender in carreferring expressions.