4.1 Data collection

The data for our study consists of a list of 1029 Jamtlandic nouns and their gender. The main inspiration for the list comes from Haspelmath & Tadmor’s (Reference Haspelmath and Tadmor2009) World Loanword Database (WOLD). This is an extensive and varied list of word meanings organized by semantic fields. We chose to use this as a base in order to obtain a wide range of concepts denoted by the nouns we would investigate. We removed some concepts that we judged would be unknown or irrelevant to Jamtlandic speakers (such as ‘cassava’, ‘tapir’, ‘manioc bread’, and ‘banyan tree’). Likewise, we added concepts with certain suffixes (-eri, -ion, -els, -heit, -dom, and -skap) because derivational suffixes have been shown to influence gender assignment in the Scandinavian languages (Källström Reference Källström1996:159; Trosterud 2001:44, Reference Trosterud, Enger, Nesset and Rice2006:1451).

We also added a few modern concepts that were not on the WOLD list in order to investigate how new words are assigned gender. (See Appendix N for the full word list.) We define ‘modern loans’ as words that entered Jamtlandic from the mid-19th century onward. We chose this cutoff point because it can be considered to represent a significant cultural shift in Jämtland. This period was characterized by an accelerating growth rate and a substantial increase in industrialization in Sweden (Magnusson Reference Magnusson2002:106). The rise of new technology during this period led to the introduction of many new words, the majority coming through Swedish. Consequently, the words that were borrowed after this period are influenced by Standard Swedish to a greater degree than those that existed in Jamtlandic prior to this period. The list of words we classified as ‘modern loans’ can be found in Appendix M.

4.2 Elicitation and coding

The fieldwork took the form of seven elicitation sessions, each lasting 40–80 minutes. Participants worked in groups of 6–8. There were 21 participants in total, all born between 1935 and 1966. We chose to focus on older speakers in order to obtain traditional dialect forms; younger people generally do not speak traditional Jamtlandic and are so different from the older speakers that they can be considered a different population (Van Epps & Carling Reference Van Epps and Carling2017). During the elicitation sessions, speakers were given a Swedish word and were asked to provide the Jamtlandic translation along with the indefinite article (definite articles and anaphoric pronouns often came up in the discussions as well). This showed us which gender speakers assigned to each noun. In general, speakers agreed on the gender for the words on the list. There were a few disagreements, most notably for words denoting animals. In these cases, we allowed the speakers to discuss the matter among themselves and kept the gender that speakers agreed on. We kept a record of the gender assigned, and each session was recorded so that we could refer back as needed.

We chose to work with groups of participants, rather than with individuals, in hopes of eliciting discussion about the lexical items. In addition, we wanted to receive input from many speakers instead of just a few. Although it could have been desirable to elicit lexical items using pictures or other stimuli, this was unfortunately not possible for a project of this scope. We are aware that using Standard Swedish to elicit the Jamtlandic lexical items runs the risk of priming speakers to use forms that could be similar to the standard language (Majid Reference Majid and Thieberger2012:56). In an attempt to counteract this, we made it clear that we were interested in obtaining dialect forms. In addition, conducting the elicitation sessions in groups helped to mitigate this – participants were able to speak Jamtlandic with each other as they discussed the lexical items, and they sometimes ‘corrected’ each other when Standard Swedish forms came up.

After the elicitation sessions, we reviewed the recordings and entered each Jamtlandic lexical item into a spreadsheet along with its gender. We also included the plural forms of each noun.Footnote ⁸ For each noun, we coded for the semantic properties count/mass, human/nonhuman, and male/female. We also coded for semantic field, which we mainly obtained from the original Haspelmath & Tadmor (Reference Haspelmath and Tadmor2009) list.

A final methodological note concerns our decision to leave compound words in the material. In many studies compounds are removed, because it is well-established that a compound word will receive the same gender as the simplex word that is its head (Haspelmath & Sims Reference Haspelmath and Sims2010), and this is certainly true for Scandinavian languages (see for instance Källström Reference Källström1996:154). We decided to include the compound words that were elicited during the field sessions, so that we would not alter and lose data unnecessarily. In addition, we believe that compounds can contribute to generalizations in the minds of speakers, even if the gender of the compound is mainly based on the gender of its head.

4.3 Principles to investigate

Some work on gender assignment in Scandinavian languages uses default genders and a large number of rules, attempting to provide an exhaustive account of gender assignment. Trosterud takes this approach for Norwegian (2001) and Old Norse (2006), using a method influenced by Steinmetz’ (Reference Steinmetz and Faarlund1985, Reference Steinmetz1986) analyses of Icelandic and German. Källström (Reference Källström1996) takes a different approach for Swedish, starting with a discussion of assignment rules taken from Swedish grammars, and then testing the ability of plural forms to predict gender using a test corpus. Though we avoid proposing strict ‘rules’ for gender assignment, the works above provide useful generalizations from which we can begin our analysis. In addition, we draw from Enger’s work on Scandinavian gender assignment (Enger Reference Enger2001, Reference Enger2002, Reference Enger2004a, b, Reference Enger2007, Reference Enger2009, Reference Enger, Dammel, Kürschner and Nübling2010, Reference Enger and Siemund2011, Reference Enger2014; Enger & Corbett Reference Enger and Greville G.2012).

For this investigation, we start from the generalizations that we predict will be the most reliable indicators of gender based on evidence from related languages. We then add a few generalizations that become apparent on further examination of the data. Table 1 shows the areas we chose to investigate.

Table 1.

Gender assignment principles investigated

Most of the above principles (aside from those in brackets) are those which have been shown to reliably predict gender assignment in other Scandinavian languages. The brackets in Table 1 indicate areas that are less well-established but that we wished to investigate further to see if any reliable tendencies exist for Jamtlandic.

To determine whether or not these principles are applicable to the Jamtlandic data, we first selected the words in our data set that fell into the relevant categories (see Appendices A–G, K and M). From these lists, we determined the percentage of words that fell into each gender (see Appendix H). This gave us an idea of how useful the various generalizations are for predicting the gender of a noun. For the phonological analysis, we made a list of possible onset and coda sequences, recorded the number of nouns of each gender that fit into each sequence, and grouped the sequences in various ways to see if any patterns became apparent (see Appendices I–J).

An assignment principle can be seen as stronger or weaker – in our study, we base this on the percentage of nouns for which the tendency correctly applies, how it fares against competing assignment tendencies, and whether or not the tendency is statistically significant as determined by a multinomial logistic regression analysis. We present figures indicating the percentage of nouns in a given category for which an assignment tendency holds true. For those principles which we tested statistically, we also include the results of this test. However, it is not necessary to draw strict boundaries as to what constitutes a valid assignment tendency – the existence of a tendency simply increases the likelihood that the nouns that fall within its domain will be assigned a particular gender.

4.4 Overall gender distribution in the material

Our final list contains 1029 words with the following gender distribution: 473 masculine, 278 feminine, and 278 neuter.Footnote ⁹ Thus the overall distribution is about 46% masculine, 27% feminine, and 27% neuter. This can be compared to the gender distribution of a similar word list for Old Norse with 725 lexemes, in which the distribution is 42.6% masculine, 26.9% feminine, and 30.8% neuter (Van Epps, Carling & Sapir Reference Van Epps, Carling and Sapir2019). According to this data, the percentage of masculine nouns has increased slightly from Old Norse, and the percentage of neuter nouns has decreased. However, this difference is not quite as great as in Norwegian, in which masculine gender has also increased at the expense of neuter gender. In a similar word list for Norwegian Nynorsk (with 1026 lexemes), the distribution is 47.2% masculine, 28.1% feminine, and 24.6% neuter (Van Epps et al. Reference Van Epps, Carling and Sapir2019).

5.1 Semantic core and words denoting humans

For the Scandinavian languages, the semantic core is based on biological sex (Källström Reference Källström1996:153; Trosterud Reference Trosterud2001:35, Reference Trosterud, Enger, Nesset and Rice2006:1444); that is, words referring to human males receive masculine gender, and words referring to human females receive feminine gender. This is a strong predictor of gender, with a few exceptions (see Källström Reference Källström1996:153; Enger Reference Enger2009:1288; Enger & Corbett Reference Enger and Greville G.2012). We have eight words in our list for human or animal referents with a specific biological sex (see Appendix A), all of which align with the expected gender (e.g. trollkering ‘witch’ is feminine, kong ‘king’ is masculine, drottning ‘queen’ is feminine).

Related to the semantic core is the tendency for words referring to people without a specified sex to be masculine (Trosterud 2001:35, Reference Trosterud, Enger, Nesset and Rice2006:1445). This tendency found support in our data. Out of 57 words referring to people without a specified sex, 46 (80.7%) received masculine gender (e.g. shlav ‘slave’, sme ‘smith’), eight (14.0%) received neuter gender (e.g. vittne ‘witness’, syschen ‘sibling’), and three (5.3%) received feminine gender (e.g. menisch ‘person’, sjukskötersk ‘nurse’). The statistical analysis shows that these words are significantly more likely to be masculine (p = .046 for masculine, and p = .017 for feminine, with neuter as the reference level). (See Appendix B for a complete list of words in this category.)

5.2 Mass nouns

Another generalization that is outside of the semantic core, but is on some level related to it (because it lies on the animacy hierarchy; see Enger Reference Enger2009:1292) is the tendency for words for materials and masses to be neuter. This tendency is present in several Germanic languages. Some varieties have even rearranged their gender systems around these lines, as in the Danish of West Jutland; see Braunmüller (Reference Braunmüller, Unterbeck, Rissanen, Nevalainen and Saari2000:28–29) and Josefsson (Reference Josefsson2013:73–94, Reference Josefsson2014:71–74); this also occurs in Dutch (see Audring Reference Audring2006:93–95). However, there is some disagreement in the literature regarding gender assignment for mass nouns in Norwegian. While Trosterud (Reference Trosterud2001:40) says that words for mass nouns are neuter, Enger & Conzett (Reference Enger and Conzett2016:226) assert that while mass nouns were neuter in Old Norwegian, in Modern Norwegian the masculine gender is taking over nouns in this category.

We have 112 mass nouns in our data set, of which 37 (33.0%) are masculine (e.g. snö ‘snow’, dagg ‘dew’), 15 (13.4%) are feminine (e.g. ånge ‘steam’, olja ‘oil’), and 60 (53.6%) are neuter (e.g. jarn ‘iron’, gres ‘grass’). (See Appendix C for a complete list of the words we included in this category.)

While the neuter nouns form a majority of the words for materials and masses, there are a number of exceptions. We included this predictor in the multinomial regression analysis in order to get a better idea of how well this tendency predicts neuter gender. According to the statistical analysis, mass nouns are significantly more likely to be neuter than masculine or feminine (p < .001 for both masculine and feminine, with neuter as the reference level). This indicates that ‘mass nouns are neuter’ is a significant predictor of neuter gender in Jamtlandic, similarly to Norwegian (Trosterud Reference Trosterud2001:40).

5.3 Other semantic tendencies

Below we outline some additional tendencies for nouns outside of the semantic core. These are a couple of semantic fields that seem to tend towards a particular gender, meriting a closer look. To avoid proposing semantic rules in an unprincipled manner, we attempted to constrain our proposed tendencies to those which meet the minimum criteria for ‘non-core’ semantic rules set forth in Enger (Reference Enger2009).Footnote ¹⁰

5.4 Summary of semantic factors

Figure 1 shows the percentage distribution for each of the non-core semantic factors. The figure reflects the overall dominance of masculine gender in the material, with masculine as the predominant gender for three out of the four semantic tendencies. As can be seen in Figure 1, none of the tendencies is exceptionless in the material. We discuss the relative strength of the tendencies in detail in Section 8 below.

Figure 1.

Gender distribution (percentage) for semantic factors.

6.1 Plural inflection

Gender and declension tend to be closely intertwined, and this is certainly the case for Germanic languages. There is some debate as to whether declension predicts gender or gender predicts declension. Arguments exist for both directions. Many researchers, including Corbett (Reference Corbett1991), Källström (Reference Källström1996) and Spencer (Reference Spencer1999) argue that because there are fewer genders than declensions, it is more suitable to say that declension predicts gender. On the other side, Enger (2004a, Reference Enger and Siemund2011) argues that the opposite direction is more plausible for Scandinavian (gender predicts plural inflection), primarily because of diachronic evidence – it is much more common for a plural form of a noun to change because its gender has changed than for the opposite to occur. He also asserts that both directions can have validity in a single language. For some nouns, gender may predict declension, and for other nouns, the opposite may be true, depending on token frequency (Enger Reference Enger2004a:52–55). Rather than saying that plural inflection predicts gender, it is perhaps more accurate to say that gender and plural inflection are correlated, with each influencing the other. It would be equally plausible to say that the gender of any given noun is assigned by other principles, and then the noun is mapped onto a particular plural paradigm based on the gender. Nevertheless, the fact remains that knowing the plural inflection of a noun can help to predict which gender the noun will have.

From plural inflection we can posit five generalizations for plural patterns, which are based on the indefinite plural and definite plural forms of the nouns in our list. They are presented and discussed here in turn.

1. 1. Nouns with indefinite plural -a and definite plural -an are non-neuter. However, when we divide this further, the pattern becomes clearer:

   1. a. Disyllabic nouns ending in -e in the indefinite singular with the a–an plural pattern are feminine.

   2. b. All other nouns with the a–an plural pattern are masculine.

We have 131 words in our material that have -e in the indefinite singular along with the a–an plural pattern. Of these, 103 (78.6%) are feminine (e.g. fikke–fikka–fikkan ‘pocket–pockets–the pockets’), 27 (19.8%) are masculine (e.g. lime–lima–liman ‘broom–brooms–the brooms’), and one (0.8%) is neuter (örhänge–örhänga–örhängan ‘earring–earrings–the earrings’). Of the words which have -a in the indefinite singular, 10 (27.8%) are feminine (e.g. kvisshla–kvisshla–kvisshlan ‘pitchfork–pitchforks–the pitchforks’), 26 (72.2%) are masculine (e.g. spela–spela–spelan ‘tail–tails–the tails’), and none are neuter. For all other words with this plural pattern (those ending in consonants or in other vowels, or monosyllabic words), we have 83 (20.75%), with feminine gender (e.g. råu–råua–råuan ‘corner–corners–the corners’), 311 (77.75%) with masculine gender (e.g. krok–kroka–krokan ‘hook–hooks–the hooks’), and six (1.5%) with neuter gender (e.g. tåur–tåura–tåuran ‘tear–tears–the tears’).

1. 2. Nouns with indefinite plural -r and definite plural -ran are non-neuter (including nouns with umlaut).

Twenty-two masculine nouns (e.g. venn–venner–vennran ‘friend–friends–the friends’), 26 feminine nouns (e.g. jeit–jetter–jettran ‘goat–goats–the goats’), and only one neuter noun (e.g. lann–länner–lännran ‘land/country–lands/countries–the lands/countries’) have this pattern. The r-ran pattern includes nouns with umlaut (e.g. bok–bökker–bökkran ‘book–books–the books’, f). For nouns with umlaut, there is an additional tendency towards feminine gender – 11 of these are feminine, four are masculine, and one is neuter.Footnote ¹² Additionally, it should be noted that seven out of eight nouns with disyllabic -u have plural pattern 2, and all of these are feminine (see Section 7.1).

1. 3. Nouns with null indefinite plural and definite plural -a are neuter.

This is the most common plural pattern for neuter nouns, covering 152 neuter nouns (e.g. bein–bein–beina ‘bone–bones–the bones’); 80.5% of all neuter nouns in the material. Only three feminine nouns (my–my–mya ‘sandfly–sandflies–the sandflies’, lus–lus–lusa ‘louse–lice–the lice’, and va–va–vaa ‘calf (of leg)–calves–the calves’) have this pattern, and one masculine noun has this pattern (tjel–tjel–tjela ‘kettle–kettles–the kettles’). Since this pattern covers so many neuter nouns and picks out a single gender, it is the strongest predictor of gender with respect to plural pattern.

1. 4. Nouns with indefinite and definite plural -a are neuter.

This pattern also indicates neuter gender and reliably picks out most of those neuter nouns that do not have plural pattern 3. Most disyllabic neuter nouns, as well as neuter nouns that end in the suffix -eri, have this pattern. 29 neuter nouns (e.g. styre–styra–styra ‘rudder–rudders–the rudders’, batteri–batteria–batteria ‘battery–batteries–the batteries’, er–era–era ‘scar–scars–the scars’), five feminine nouns (e.g. släkt–släkta–släkta ‘relative–relatives–the relatives’, lever–levra–levra ‘liver–livers–the livers’), and two masculine nouns (slätt–slätta–slätta ‘plain–plains–the plains, kant–kanta–kanta ‘edge–edges–the edge’) take this pattern. The plural pattern a–a still indicates neuter gender fairly reliably, though it does not cover as many nouns as the null–a pattern.

1. 5. Nouns with null indefinite plural and definite plural -an are masculine.

Only four nouns in our data set have this plural pattern: three masculine nouns (bune–bune–bunen ‘tool–tools–the tools’, kłänning–kłänning–kłänningan ‘dress–dresses–the dresses’, bånt–bånt–båntan ‘bunch–bunches–the bunches’) and one feminine noun (kongro–kongro–kongroan ‘spider–spiders–the spiders’). Because of the lack of data for this plural pattern, we cannot draw any conclusions from this and we exclude it from our analysis.

Figure 2 shows the gender distribution for all of the above plural patterns (excluding pattern 5).

Figure 2.

Gender distribution (percentage) for plural patterns.

The assignment tendencies based on plural declensions are relatively robust, as they can predict the gender of 65.1% of the neuter nouns in our data. Although plural patterns may be reliable predictors for neuter gender, plural declension does not usually pick out a single gender for masculine and feminine nouns.

6.2 Derivational suffixes

Based on studies of other Scandinavian languages (Källström Reference Källström1996; Trosterud Reference Trosterud2001, Reference Trosterud, Enger, Nesset and Rice2006), we selected certain suffixes to include in our study which we thought would be of relevance to gender assignment in Jamtlandic. Table 2 gives an overview of our results for the derivational suffixes, and we discuss each result below in detail. See Appendix F for a complete list of the words with derivational suffixes in our material.

Table 2.

Gender indicated by derivational suffixes in Jamtlandic and Scandinavian

7.1 Disyllabic nouns ending in a vowel

Here we present a brief history of weak masculine and feminine nouns in Scandinavian. We go on to look at how the phonological endings from historically weak nouns can indicate gender in Jamtlandic.

In Old Norse, weak masculine nouns took -i in the nominative form, and -a in the accusative. In contrast, weak feminine nouns took -a in the nominative and -u in the accusative (Haugen Reference Haugen2015:71–72). According to Wessén (Reference Wessén1955[1969]:138), in most Swedish dialects the distinction between nominative and accusative was erased by the medieval period, leaving -e as the ending for weak masculines and -a as the ending for weak feminines. However, in the dialects of Norrland, endings of weak masculine nouns are divided according to animacy: -e (from the Old Norse nominative -i) occurs with animate nouns, and -a (from the Old Norse accusative -a) with inanimates. This is because animates are more likely to occur in subject position, taking the nominative; while inanimates were more likely to occur in object position, taking the accusative. For weak feminine nouns, -a is the usual ending, though occasionally -å or -u can be used (from the old accusative form).

In Norwegian, the final vowels in weak nouns developed differently in different dialects. In some dialects, -i and -a merged to -e after the Old Norwegian period, so the distinction between weak masculine and weak feminine nouns was lost. However, in Østlandet and Trøndelag, jamvektsord (words with equal stress on both syllables; see Kristoffersen & Torp Reference Kristoffersen and Torp2016:174–188) behave differently: the vowel is not reduced, and instead the oblique form of the noun is taken (-a for weak masculine nouns, and -u for feminine nouns, with some dialectal variation; see Enger & Conzett Reference Enger and Conzett2016:236–237). Nevertheless, in modern Norwegian, -e is most strongly connected with feminine gender. Evidence for this can be seen in the fact that many loanwords ending in -e are assigned feminine gender, and some formerly masculine nouns ending in -e are now feminine (Enger & Conzett Reference Enger and Conzett2016:227). Since Jamtlandic shares some features with both Norwegian and Norrland dialects, we could expect it to display characteristics of either Norwegian or Norrland Swedish in this respect. For this reason, we consider disyllabic words ending in -e, -u, and -a in our data (see Appendix G).

In our material there are 8 disyllabic words ending in -u (the old oblique form for weak feminines; see Wessén Reference Wessén1955[1969]:139); all of these are feminine (e.g. bråsu ‘fire’, håku ‘chin’). Based on this data, we can make the generalization that disyllabic nouns ending in -u are feminine in Jamtlandic. This is what we would expect from Jamtlandic as a Norrland Swedish variety.

Next, we look at the 38 disyllabic nouns that end in -a. Of these, 22 (57.9%) are masculine (e.g. hæga ‘pasture’, nåsa ‘nose’), 16 (42.1%) are feminine (e.g. knæpa ‘lock’, sjæga ‘ladder’), and none are neuter. Though it is slightly more likely for these nouns to be masculine, there does not seem to be much motivation to posit a rule that assigns masculine gender to these nouns. To confirm this, we included this measure in the statistical analysis, and found that this measure is in fact not significant (p = .323). However, it is noteworthy that none of these nouns are neuter. The gender distribution for disyllabic nouns ending in -a is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Distribution of disyllabic nouns ending in -a and -e.

We might expect nouns with -a to take masculine gender in Jamtlandic, since this is the expected pattern for dialects of Norrland. The relatively even distribution between masculine and feminine in this category might reflect influence from Standard Swedish, in which disyllabic nouns with -a formerly were feminine, and some of these nouns still have a feminine flavor (as in klocka ‘clock’, which is frequently pronominalized with hon ‘she’ in Standard Swedish). However, a closer look reveals that there is a pattern that explains the distribution we see for word-final vowels in weak masculine nouns in Jamtlandic: weak masculine nouns with a short stem vowel end in -e, and weak masculine nouns with a long stem vowel can end in either -e or -a. In our material, 10 weak masculine nouns with a long stem end in -e, and 18 weak masculine nouns with a long stem end in -a.

Of the 169 disyllabic nouns ending in -e, 110 (65.1%) are feminine (e.g. tonge ‘tongue’, uggle ‘owl’), 32 (18.9%) are masculine (e.g. vinge ‘wing’, åshle ‘carcass’), and 27 (16.0%) are neuter (e.g. veite ‘wheat’, styre ‘rudder’). Figure 3 shows the gender distribution among disyllabic nouns ending in -e, compared to disyllabic nouns ending in –a.

The statistical analysis confirms the significance of this assignment tendency (p < .001 for feminine gender, with neuter as the reference level). We include ‘disyllabic nouns with -e are feminine’ as a generalization for Jamtlandic.

7.2 Monosyllabic nouns ending in a vowel

According to Trosterud (Reference Trosterud2001:47), monosyllabic nouns ending in a vowel are feminine in Norwegian; in addition, monosyllabic nouns ending in a back vowel are feminine in Old Norse (Trosterud Reference Trosterud, Enger, Nesset and Rice2006:1457). Our list contains 40 monosyllabic nouns that end in a vowel. Of these, 11 (27.5%) are masculine (e.g. söu ‘sheep’), 16 (40%) are feminine (e.g. ske ‘spoon’), and 13 (32.5%) are neuter (e.g. huu ‘head’). Thus, there does not seem to be a clear tendency for monosyllabic nouns ending in a vowel. However, when we separate out the back vowels from the front vowels, we find that monosyllabic nouns ending in a back vowel tend to be feminine. Of the 18 monosyllabic words that end in a back vowel, 11 (61.1%) are feminine (e.g. tåu ‘toe’, bu ‘shop, store’), five (27.8%) are masculine (e.g. tråu ‘thread’), and two (11.1%) are neuter (e.g. bła ‘leaf’), as shown in Figure 4. See Appendix K for a full list of words in this category.

Figure 4.

Gender distribution for monosyllabic nouns ending in a back vowel.

Based on this data, there is a slight tendency for monosyllabic words ending in a back vowel to be feminine in Jamtlandic. To test whether or not this is significant, we included this measure in our statistical analysis. The results show that the tendency towards feminine gender for monosyllabic words ending in a back vowel is not significant (p = .215 for feminine gender, with neuter as the reference level).

7.3 Onset and coda sequences

We performed a thorough analysis of onset and coda sequences in Jamtlandic in order to find any gender assignment patterns that might exist (see Appendices I–J). Besides the pattern for monosyllabic back vowels discussed in Section 7.2 above, we did not find any patterns based on onsets and codas that seemed to be of much significance for gender assignment. While some studies have made claims about onset and coda sequences and gender assignment in German (e.g. Köpcke Reference Köpcke1982, Köpcke & Zubin Reference Köpcke and Zubin1983), Norwegian (Trosterud Reference Trosterud2001:47–50), and Old Norse (Trosterud Reference Trosterud, Enger, Nesset and Rice2006:1453–1456), these generalizations tend to have many exceptions.

The absence of strong tendencies for onset and coda sequences in our material does not necessarily mean that phonological assignment tendencies do not exist in Jamtlandic, however. Because some phonological sequences are relatively rare, it is difficult to detect tendencies with only a limited subset of nouns. It is possible that an analysis of onsets and codas in all Jamtlandic nouns would yield different results. In addition, there could be some patterns based on phonological structure, which we did not investigate due to our limited data. Some tendencies for phonological structure have been found in Standard Swedish (Noreen Reference Noreen1923, Liljegren Reference Liljegren1995) and German (Köpcke Reference Köpcke1982, Köpcke & Zubin Reference Köpcke and Zubin1983).

8.1 Final list of assignment principles

One way of measuring the efficacy of assignment tendencies is by looking at the percentage of words for which a tendency correctly predicts gender (for those words in which it is expected to apply). Below we list all the semantic, morphological and phonological gender assignment tendencies discussed above and provide the percentages of words for which the tendency holds true. We put the tendencies that can assign either masculine or feminine gender in parentheses, in order to point out that they are different from the other tendencies, which assign only one gender.

Semantic tendencies

• Words referring to males receive masculine gender, and words referring to females receive feminine gender: five feminine, three masculine, 100%

• Words for people not specified for sex are masculine: 46/57, 80.7%

• Words for time concepts are masculine: 23/34, 67.6%

• Words for animals are masculine: 46/78, 59.0%

• Mass nouns are neuter: 60/112, 53.6%

Morphological tendencies

• Pluralization

  • ○ Nouns with indefinite plural -a and definite plural -an are non-neuter (as per below):

    • ▪ Disyllabic nouns with singular -e, indefinite plural -a, and definite plural -an are feminine: 103/131, 78.6%

    • ▪ Other nouns with indefinite plural -a and definite plural -an are masculine: 337/436, 77.3%

  • ○ (Nouns with indefinite plural -r and definite plural -ran are non-neuter: 48/49, 98%)

  • ○ Nouns with null indefinite plural and definite plural -a are neuter: 152/156, 97.4%

  • ○ Nouns with indefinite and definite plural -a are neuter: 29/36, 80.6%

  • ○ Nouns with umlaut in the plural are feminine: 11/16, 68.8%

• Derivational suffixes

  • ○ Words with -heit are feminine: 12/12, 100%

  • ○ Words with -ion are masculine: 10/10, 100%

  • ○ Words with -dom are masculine: 5/5, 100%

  • ○ Words with the agentive suffix -ar are masculine: 16/16, 100%

  • ○ Words with the derivational suffix -eri are neuter: 6/6, 100%

  • ○ Words with -els are feminine: 9/10, 90%

  • ○ Denominal and deadjectival nouns with -ing are masculine: 14/16, 87.5%

  • ○ Deverbal nouns with -ing are feminine: 11/13, 84.6%

  • ○ Words with -skap are neuter: 4/6, 66.7%

Phonological tendencies

• Disyllabic words ending in -u are feminine: 8/8, 100%

• (Disyllabic words ending in -a are non-neuter: 38/38, 100%)

• Disyllabic words ending in -e are feminine: 110/169, 65.1%

• Monosyllabic words ending in a back vowel are feminine: 11/18, 61.1%

• Onset and Coda: no clear tendencies

Figure 5 shows the above percentages visually, ordered from most to least reliable and color-coded by category (semantic, plural, phonological, and derivational suffix).

Figure 5.

Percentage of correct predictions for each assignment tendency, by category.

From Figure 5, we can see that the strongest assignment tendencies span a wide range of categories. We have again put the plural r-ran tendency and the disyllabic -a tendency in parentheses here, because they indicate two genders and thus have an ‘unfair advantage’. Biological sex stands out as the only semantic tendency that reaches or approaches 100%, and while disyllabic -a and -u have 100% accuracy, the other phonological tendencies fall on the less-accurate side. Derivational suffixes tend to be very reliable, with 5 of the suffixes at 100%. The remaining suffixes fall around the middle of the chart, while -skap is less effective as a predictor and falls towards the end. None of the plural suffixes reach 100%, but three of them are at 97.4% or above. From percentage coverage, then, it is not really possible to determine which categories of assignment principles are the strongest – besides the non-core semantic tendencies, which seem to be weaker than other types of assignment tendencies.

Figure 6 shows the percentage coverage of each of the tendencies, color-coded by gender. From this, we can see which genders have the most reliable assignment tendencies.

Figure 6.

Percentage of correct predictions for each assignment tendency, by gender.

According to Figure 6, the most reliable tendencies are those that predict the non-neuter genders (shown here in shades of blue). Only two tendencies that predict neuter (the derivational suffix -eri and the plural pattern null-a) have a very high percentage (tendencies for neuter gender are shown in light gray). The tendencies that can predict either masculine or feminine gender are both very reliable, but this is undoubtedly because these can indicate two different genders instead of just one. While the percentage coverage is certainly not the only thing worth considering in gender assignment, it can give us a general sense of which tendencies are the most reliable for Jamtlandic gender assignment.

8.2 Conflicts and interactions

Assignment principles overlap and interact, competing with and reinforcing each other to assign gender. Another way of measuring the strength of assignment tendencies is by looking at these interactions and conflicts. Here we provide some examples of interaction in our material, drawing some conclusions as to what this tells us about gender assignment.

8.2.2 Conflicts

We created a list of the words in our material in which two or more assignment principles compete to assign gender to a noun (Appendix L). In the material there are 69 words for which two or more conflicting assignment principles applied. From this list, we looked at which types of tendencies won and lost over other types of tendencies. The results of this are summarized in Table 3.

Table 3.

Summary of assignment tendency conflicts in the material

Table 3 reveals some of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different assignment tendencies. According to Table 3 the strongest tendencies are biological sex, disyllabic -a, disyllabic -u, plural inflection, and the suffix -ar. However, all of these categories apart from the plural inflection have four or fewer instances of conflict, so we should be careful about placing too much weight on this. The weakest seems to be disyllabic -e, with only eight wins and 29 losses. This too should be taken with a grain of salt, given the complex status of words with disyllabic -e in Jamtlandic (see Section 7.1). Notably, the tendencies for disyllabic -e and mass nouns seem to be evenly balanced, with each winning and losing against the other.

We have represented the percentages of ‘wins’ from Table 3 in a hierarchy (Figure 7).

Figure 7.

Hierarchy of precedence of different assignment tendencies, based on Table 3.

In Figure 7, the semantic tendencies are in bold, the phonological tendencies are in italics, and the morphological tendencies are underlined. The tendencies on the leftmost level of the hierarchy are the strongest. For any given level, a tendency will win over the tendencies that appear on levels to the right. Tendencies may either win or lose to tendencies within the same level. One problem with this is that some of the tendencies (monosyllabic back vowels, and the suffixes -heit, -ing, -dom, -ion, -skap, and -eri) did not conflict in our material, so they are not present in the hierarchy. In addition, we can only establish three levels for the hierarchy without making inaccurate predictions, so our hierarchy clarifies the situation only to a limited degree. Notably, Figure 7 does not show a clear dominance of semantic assignment tendencies over formal tendencies. Biological sex comes out as the strongest predictor, but other tendencies that are related to the semantic core (words for humans not specified for sex, mass nouns, and animals) are less reliable. This contradicts both Corbett’s (Reference Corbett1991) assertion that semantic rules take precedence over formal rules, and the opposite approach (Steinmetz Reference Steinmetz and Faarlund1985, Reference Steinmetz1986, Reference Steinmetz2006; Rice Reference Rice2006) in which rules are unranked. It lends support to Nesset’s (Reference Nesset, Enger, Nesset and Rice2006) Core Semantic Override Principle (see Section 2), which holds that the semantic core outranks formal rules, but other semantic rules do not. Notably, the tendencies based on plural forms always take precedence over other tendencies. Disyllabic -a and -u also win out 100% of the time, while disyllabic -e has far more losses. The suffixes are mixed, with the agentive suffix always winning (possibly because of its ties to the semantic core; see Section 8.2.1 above), and the -ing and -els suffixes in the middle of the hierarchy, split equally between wins and losses.

When we compare percentage coverage and the conflicts table, we notice that some assignment tendencies have 100% in both measures. These are biological sex, disyllabic -a and -u, and the suffix -ar. Next come the generalizations based on plural forms and the other suffixes, all of which have 100% for some measures, but less in others. The non-core semantic tendencies and the tendency for disyllabic -e rank low on both measures and can thus be seen as the weakest tendencies in the material.

8.3 Statistical analysis

Another way to test the strength of the various predictors is by fitting them to a statistical model. In order to test the significance of some of the predictors, we conducted a statistical analysis using multinomial logistic regression. We focused on the non-core semantic tendencies and the phonological tendencies for this analysis. We included the following predictors: nouns referring to humans not specified for sex, mass/count, animals, time, disyllabic -a and -e, and monosyllabic back vowels. In this section we summarize the results of the statistical analysis and compare the results to our measures of percentage coverage and the conflicts hierarchy.

The statistical analysis can help us determine which of the non-core semantic predictors are valid. The analysis shows that words referring to humans (not specified for sex) are significantly more likely to be masculine (p < .001 for feminine and masculine, with neuter as the reference level). We also find that words for animals are significantly more likely to be masculine (p = .006). In addition, mass nouns are significantly more likely to be neuter: with neuter as the reference level, p < .001 for both masculine and feminine. This shows that even though these tendencies are low on the conflicts hierarchy, they are valid assignment principles. However, time concepts do not come out as significant, with p = .079 for masculine. This result, combined with the relatively low status of this predictor in the percentage coverage and the conflicts hierarchy, means that this tendency may not be valid for Jamtlandic.

The statistical analysis also clarifies the situation for those phonological predictors whose status was uncertain. The tendency for disyllabic words ending in -e to be feminine is significant (p = .001), and there is not a significant difference between masculine and neuter (p = .067). This means that even though this tendency is low in the conflicts hierarchy, it is valid for gender assignment. In contrast, disyllabic -a was not a significant predictor of masculine gender (p = .323). We did not expect masculine and feminine gender to be significantly different from each other for this measure, so this confirms our intuition and supports our decision to leave this as a tendency for non-neuter (assigning either masculine or feminine gender), rather than for masculine gender (see Section 7.1). In addition, monosyllabic words ending in a back vowel was not a significant predictor of feminine gender (p = .215). Table 4 summarizes the statistical results, with the significant results highlighted.

Table 4.

P-values from multinomial logistic regression analysis (with significant results highlighted)

The statistical analysis helps clarify the status of many of the assignment principles. From Table 4, it appears that the tendency for time concepts to be masculine and the tendency for monosyllabic words ending in back vowels to be feminine should be discarded. Interestingly, all of the semantic predictors that come out as significant are connected in some way to the semantic core and animacy (or individuation, in the case of mass nouns). The only tendency that has no connection to this (time concepts) is not significant.

Because of the large number of predictors in our study, we were unable to include all of the assignment tendencies in the statistical analysis. We did not look at those which have 100% or nearly 100% support in the material, but have smaller numbers of nouns (biological sex, disyllabic -u, and derivational suffixes). Because these are well-supported tendencies in other Scandinavian languages, it is likely that they could be shown to be statistically valid in a larger material. Further research is necessary to confirm this.