2016/11/01 by Ruth Kramer · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis #Gender Studies in Language #Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
paper · doi:10.1111/lnc3.12226
openalex publication_date 2016/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/06
Abstract The goal of this paper is to critically review the results of linguistic research on the syntactic location of gender features. It has become relatively clear that gender features do not project their own phrase “GenP” and they are not located on the Num(ber) head that hosts number features. Instead, the field mostly agrees that gender features are located on the nominal—either on N or, in approaches that decompose lexical categories, on the nominalizing head n . Additional gender features have been proposed higher in the structure in order to capture certain processes that impose their own gender (e.g., diminutives are always feminine in the Semitic language Amharic) and to capture patterns of hybrid agreement (e.g., Russian nouns that are grammatically masculine but may trigger feminine agreement when referring to a woman).