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Volume 35, Issue 1
  • ISSN 0929-7332
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9919
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Abstract

Abstract

Gender-(mis)matching pronouns have been studied extensively in experiments. However, a phenomenon common to various languages has thus far been overlooked: the systemic use of non-feminine pronouns when referring to female individuals. The present study is the first to provide experimental insights into the interpretation of such a pronoun: Limburgian ‘his/its’ and Dutch ‘his/its’ are grammatically ambiguous between masculine and neuter, but while Limburgian can refer to women, the Dutch equivalent cannot. Employing an acceptability judgment task, we presented speakers of Limburgian ( = 51) with recordings of sentences in Limburgian featuring , and speakers of Dutch ( = 52) with Dutch translations of these sentences featuring . All sentences featured a potential male or female antecedent embedded in a stereotypically male or female context. We found that ratings were higher for sentences in which the pronoun could refer back to the antecedent. For Limburgians, this extended to sentences mentioning female individuals. Context further modulated sentence appreciation. Possible mechanisms regarding the interpretation of as coreferential with a female individual will be discussed.

© Algemene Vereniging voor Taalwetenschap
Available under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
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2018-12-03
2023-12-10

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Gender-mismatching pronouns in context
Linguistics in the Netherlands 35, 97 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00007.pie
/content/journals/10.1075/avt.00007.pie
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): Dutch; gender; Limburgian; possessive pronoun; stereotypes

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