gender assignment to anglicisms in dutch: a variationist … · 2015-11-30 · gender assignment to...

Gender assignment

to anglicisms in Dutch:

a variationist perspective

Karlien Franco, Eline Zenner & Dirk Speelman

RU Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics

Overview

1. Introduction

2. Data & variables

3. Analyses & results

Part 1: determinants of gender assignment

Part 2: (dis)agreement between respondents

4. Conclusion

Taal & Tongval 2015, Gent 27.11.2015

Introduction

de / het abstract


singular definite article

common gender neuter gender

de het

Introduction

de / het abstract

de / het blog


2C singular definite article


de het

https://weblog.bol.com/

Introduction

de / het abstract

de / het blog

de / het establishment

gender in Dutch:

• sg. definite article used to identify gender

• marked on other features of NP as well

• largely arbitrary (Haeseryn et al. 1997)


2C singular definite article


de het

Gender assignment to loanwords

loanwords generally follow the gender system of native nouns

but gender in Dutch largely arbitrary

other factors that apply to loanwords:

• semantic analogy (controversial)

e.g. Sp. la dirección (‘address’) → la URL (De La Cruz Cabanillas et al. 2007)

• unmarked / default gender host language

~ most frequent gender? (= common gender in Dutch)

• gender of noun in donor language (gender copy)

→ does not apply to anglicisms


Gender assignment to anglicisms in Dutch

anglicisms generally get common gender (de)

unless there is some reason for using neuter gender (het)

• influence of semantic field:

– drinks → common gender e.g. de gin, de tonic

– collectives → neuter gender e.g. het panel, het team

– substances → both e.g. het plastic, de/het nylon

– ...

• influence of morphology/suffixes:

– -ing → common gender e.g. de mededeling → de dancing

– -ment → neuter gender e.g. het argument → het management

• gender of closely related equivalent (cf. semantic analogy)

– cognate e.g. het huis → het arthouse

– translational equivalent e.g. het spek → het bacon


Gender assignment to anglicisms in Dutch

anglicisms generally get common gender (de)

unless there is some reason for using neuter gender (het)

→ what happens when more than one factor applies to the loanword?

• process of gender assignment to loanwords is unclear (Haeseryn et al.

1997)

– often overview of rules + examples (Berteloot & Van der Sijs 2003,

Haeseryn et al. 1997, Schenck 1985)

– Geerts 1996: hierarchy of rules:

cognate > prototypical > suffix > gender

gender gender of gender translational

semantic field equivalent

• suggests that there is one and only one gender for each anglicism

e.g. het bedrijf → het concern (rule: translational equivalent)

het argument → het management (rule: anglicisms ending in suffix – ment are neuter gender)


The stability of the gender of loanwords

the gender of loanwords is assumed to be stable

e.g. Corbett 1991

• gender variation often assigned to the role of the speech community (e.g.

Poplack et al.1982): established nouns are no longer expected to show

variation

• Callies et al. (2012)

– explicitly focus on variation in gender assignment to loanwords

– more variation found in experimental data than in corpus data


Research questions

1. which features influence gender assignment to anglicisms in Dutch?

2. how stable is the gender of loanwords in a speech community? is

gender variability related to the degree of establishment of the

anglicism?

→ innovations:

• established and unestablished anglicisms

• analysis consists of two parts:

– determinants of gender assignment

– (dis)agreement between respondents


Overview

1. Introduction

2. Data & variables




4. Conclusion


Data: questionnaire

• two parts:

– personal information

– forced-choice task to elicit definite determiner and personal pronoun

for 175 nominal anglicisms:


Forced-choice task


development

facelift

dress

reality

tenniscoach

mummy

entertainment

suspense

copy

release

statement

hippie

carpooling

aquaplaning

busticket

exit-poll

catsuit

chick

sneak

achievement

extra-time

blooper

knowhow

teamspirit

dinner

American dream

stream

contest

lovestory

baseballbat

witch

sit-in

believer

bodypainting

trench

wall

printing

leisure

sensor

error

pay

spray

establishment

camping ground

assist

skateboard

intercom

search

gallery

jack

dancefloor

basketbal

researcher

majorette

quizzer

network

showcase

spot

computersoftware

noise

suburb

escalatie

tennismatch

concept car

supermarkt

technology

snowboarder

disc

countdown

tumbling

sound

shooting

chill-out

stationwagon

indian summer

slam

character

bulldog

comedian

popart

party

diskette

briefing

shoppingcenter

callgirl

youngster

franchising

voucher

demand

squat

ace

roadbook

recycling

boogie

engine

hometown

guesthouse

supply

hospitality

track

e-learning

hovercraft

football

talkshow

vibe

freebee

empathie

rate

fairness

marketing

sticker

package

inspector

click

opportunity

braindrain

black-out

safety

member

panty

draft

view

freelancester

beach

shareholder

supermodel

showtime

town

security

loafer

cooler

tracker

queen

career day

steeple

combo

soundsystem

mall

tuning

patchwork

babyfoon

input

publicity

underdog

key

award

check-in

gangster

rock'n'roll

jingle

smog

column

theory

sense of urgency

publishing

director

scorecard

showbiz

surround

battle

image

jogger

channel

clash

resource

supercomputer

creditcard

hotelmanager

it-girl

wash

cover

nanny

cashflow

nickname

container ship

gossip

screen

Data: questionnaire

• two parts:

– personal information

– forced-choice task to elicit definite determiner and personal pronoun

for 175 nominal anglicisms:

• 45 respondents:

– students at University of Leuven

– mean age 21.5

– men underrepresented (10 men, 35 women)

– from all over Flanders


Influential features

• establishment of anglicism

• animacy of anglicism

• article of lexical-semantic equivalent

• socio-economic properties of participants


Establishment of anglicism

• two types of anglicisms based on listedness in Van Dale14

– 97 recent established nouns:

• listed and borrowed in 1950s or later

• information about listed gender (de / het)

– 78 unestablished nouns

• collected using newspaper corpora (TwNC and LeNC): unlisted

anglicisms that occur ≥ 100 times in both corpora

• frequency information

– correlation infrequency and use of default gender?

– frequent: <300 occurrences in TwNC and LeNC

– infrequent: >300 occurrences in TwNC and LeNC


levels frequency in questionnaire

established anglicism established de 66

established het 12

unestablished anglicism unestablished frequent 49

unestablished infrequent 48







cf. Haeseryn et al. (1997):

people and animals → common gender

e.g. de onderwijzer ‘the teacher’, de leeuw ‘the lion’

• distribution in questionnaire:

- animate 27 items

- inanimate: 148 items







cf. supra: semantic analogy / closely related equivalent

• cognate gender

e.g. het bord → het skateboard

↔ gender of translation

e.g. het strand → het beach (no cognate)

• distribution in questionnaire:

- 133 items have de as article of lexical-semantic equivalent

- 42 items have het as article of lexical-semantic equivalent







predictor levels number of respondents

gender female 35

male 10

region central region 24

east of Flanders 13

west of Flanders 8

education parents high 27

low 18

proficiency in good 25

English bad 20

dialect knowledge no 26

yes 19

Overview

1. Introduction

2. Data & variables




4. Conclusion


Determinants of gender assignment

• previous research on anglicisms in Dutch:

– usually based on small corpora/word lists

– raw frequencies or proportions

→ methodological innovation: inferential statistics

• method: mixed effects logistic regression

– binary response variable article: de or het

– random intercepts for respondents and anglicisms


Results

• model performs well:

– 91.33% correct predictions (baseline 85%)

– C value 0.93

• 85% de responses (common gender)

• three predictors reach significance:

– establishment of anglicism

– article of equivalent

– animacy of anglicism


Results


established

de

established

het

unestablished

frequent

unestablished

infrequent

establishment

art

icle

establishment

het

de

Results


established

de

established

het

unestablished

frequent

unestablished

infrequent

establishment

art

icle

establishment

het

de

***

**

p < 0.1

Results


p < 0.001

article of lexical-semantic equivalent

het

de

art

icle

article of equivalent de het

Results


het

de

animacy animate inanimate

animacy

art

icle

p < 0.001

Results

• predictors have expected effect:

– de is used very frequently

– proportion of het responses increases for anglicisms that

• are listed with het in the dictionary

• are unestablished and infrequent

• have a neuter gender lexical-semantic equivalent

• are inanimate

• variation in the amount of disagreement between the respondents in the

data set per anglicism:

e.g. statement: 9 respondents out of 45 select de, 36 choose het

vs. loafer: 41 respondents choose de (4 respondents NA)

vs. smog: 36 respondents choose de, 9 respondents choose het



sm

og

sta

tem

ent

loa

fer

Overview

1. Introduction

2. Data & variables




4. Conclusion


Measuring (dis)agreement between

respondents

new measure of homogeneity in the responses per anglicism

• based on measure of internal uniformity (Geeraerts, Grondelaers &

Speelman 1999)

• calculation:

2 ∗ (−1

2+ 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑒² + 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛ℎ𝑒𝑡²)

• homogeneity = 1 when every respondent chooses the same definite

article

homogeneity = 0 when half of the respondents choose de and half of

the respondents choose het

e.g. skateboard: homogeneity = 91% (0.9131)

achievement: homogeneity = 0% (0.0005)


Measuring (dis)agreement between

respondents


proportion of de

hom

ogeneity

Analysis

• linear regression analysis:

– response: homogeneity per anglicism

– predictors:




• model explains about 26% of the variation in the data set (Adjusted R² =

0.2654)


Results

• mean homogeneity: 71%

• three predictors reach significance:

– article of lexical-semantic equivalent

– establishment

– animacy


Results


more

homogeneity

less

homogeneity

article of equivalent de het

hom

og

eneity

article of lexical-semantic equivalent

p < 0.001

Results


hom

og

eneity

established

de

less

homogeneity established

het

unestablished

frequent

unestablished

infrequent

establishment

establishment more

homogeneity

Results


hom

og

eneity

established

de

less

homogeneity established

het

unestablished

frequent

unestablished

infrequent

establishment

establishment more

homogeneity

** **

Results


animacy animate inanimate

animacy

hom

og

eneity

less

homogeneity

more

homogeneity p < 0.001

Results

• less homogeneity in the responses when:

– the article of the lexical-semantic equivalent of anglicism is not de

– the anglicism is not listed with de in the dictionary

– the anglicism is unestablished and infrequent

– the anglicism is not animate

→ less homogeneity in conflict situations and especially in case of

conflict with (default) article de

vs. previous studies: clear set of rules determines one (and only one)

article per anglicism


Overview

1. Introduction

2. Data & variables




4. Conclusion


Conclusion

two methods to study variation in the gender of anglicisms in Dutch:

determinants of the gender of anglicisms

establishment, article of lexical-semantic equivalent & animacy

variation in the degree of homogeneity in responses

no one & only one gender

less homogeneity in conflict situations

(vs. hierarchy of gender assignment rules)

attention for the degree of establishment of anglicism

variation occurs for established anglicisms as well


Thank you!

[email protected]

http://wwwling.arts.kuleuven.be/qlvl/karlien

References

Berteloot, A., & Van der Sijs, N. (2003). Dutch. In M. Görlach (Ed.), English in Europe (pp. 37–56).

Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

Callies, M., Onysko, A., & Ogiermann, E. (2012). Investigating gender variation of English

loanwords in German. In C. Furiassi, V. Pulcini, & F. Rodríguez González (Eds.), The Anglicization of European Lexis (pp. 65–89). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Publishing Company.

Corbett, G. G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

De La Cruz Cabanillas, I., Tejedor Martínez, C., Díez Prados, M., & Cerdá Redondo, E. (2007).

English loanwords in Spanish computer language. English for Specific Purposes, 26(1), 52–78.

Geeraerts, D., Grondelaers, S., & Speelman, D. (1999). Convergentie en divergentie in de Nederlandse woordenschat: een onderzoek naar kleding- en voetbaltermen. P.J. Meertens-

Instituut.

Geerts, G. (1996). De genusbepalende eigenschappen van Engelse leenwoorden in het

Nederlands. Verslagen En Mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie Voor Nederlandse Taal- En Letterkunde, 106(2-3), 137–146.

Haeseryn, W., Romijn, K., Geerts, G., De Rooij, J., & Van den Toorn, M. C. (1997). Algemene Nederlandse Spraakkunst. Groningen/Deurne: Martinus Nijhoff uitgevers/Wolters Plantyn.

Poplack, S., Pousada, A., & Sankoff, D. (1982). Competing influences on gender assignment:

variable process, stable outcome. Lingua, 57, 1–28.


References

Schenck, A. (1985). Genusbepalende eigenschappen van Engelse leenwoorden in het Nederlands.

KU Leuven.

Van Dale14 = Den Boon, T., & Geeraerts, D. (2005). Van Dale Groot Woordenboek van de Nederlandse Taal (14th ed.). Utrecht / Antwerpen: Van Dale Lexicografie


gender assignment to anglicisms in dutch: a variationist … · 2015-11-30 · gender assignment to...

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