Grammatical Gender in Norwegian Dialects: Variation, Acquisition & Change

Recent research shows that grammatical gender is changing in Norwegian dialects. In some places, the traditional system with three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) is turning into a two-gender system of common gender and neuter. GenVAC aims to study changes in grammatical gender through large-scale experimental studies. It will scrutinize to what extent feminine gender is disappearing from Norwegian dialects, and to what extent shared masculine and feminine forms play a role in this process. In fact, previous research suggests that the feminine forms disappear because many of them have the same form as the masculine forms, but that the cause of the change is due to factors external to the grammar. However, these shared forms have existed for decades, raising the question of why feminine gender is subject to change now. An important objective in GenVAC is to study the interplay between the grammatical factors and factors having to do with language and language use in social settings. The project will also compare the ongoing development to similar historical changes in other languages like Danish and Dutch. In order to meet its objectives, GenVAC will use three methods: i) production experiments where participants play a kind of game in order to produce target forms expressing grammatical gender, ii) eye-tracking where eye movements are used to investigate how the mental grammar uses grammatical gender, and iii) collecting linguistic and socioeconomic data from the participants which can be correlated with their linguistic production. Participants will be three different age groups. Understanding a complex phenomenon like grammatical gender requires collaboration across linguistic disciplines and methodologies. Therefore, a large group of national and international researchers have been assembled to provide the necessary expertise and breadth required by the research questions.

This project studies varieties of spoken Norwegian in the context of grammatical gender and change. Recent studies suggest that the traditional three-gender system is in the process of changing into a two-gender system. In some of these studies, the nature of the change is argued to be due to acquisition because of syncretism between the masculine and the feminine, whereas the cause is argued to be sociolinguistic. However, this syncretism has existed for decades, raising the question of why the change is happening now. The GenVAC project will study this by way of a large-scale cross-dialectal experimental study. It will scrutinize to what extent feminine gender is disappearing from Norwegian dialects and what the role of syncretism between masculine and feminine is in this ongoing change. The project also aims to explain the development of feminine gender in Norwegian dialects by studying the interplay between grammatical and sociolinguistic factors, and also compare the ongoing development to similar changes in other languages like Danish and Dutch. In order to meet its objectives, GenVAC will make use of production experiments and eye-tracking experiments, in addition to collecting metadata about participants from different dialectal areas across Norway. Three different groups of speakers will be studied, ranging from children in kindergarten to adults. Understanding a complex phenomenon like grammatical gender requires collaboration across linguistic disciplines and methodologies. Therefore, a large group of researchers have been assembled to provide the necessary expertise and breadth required by the research questions: acquisition, formal grammar, eye-tracking, sociolinguists, Norwegian dialectology, other languages. Many of them will also contribute to outreach, since changes in grammatical gender is a topic of great interest to many Norwegians.