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Order out of chaos? The English gender change in the Southwest Midlands as a process of semantically based reorganization

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2008

MERJA STENROOS
MERJA STENROOS*
Affiliation:
Department of Cultural Studies and Languages, University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger, [email protected]
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Abstract

The article presents a study of the process of gender change in the thirteenth-century Southwest Midlands, based on twenty texts localized in this area. The assumption is that a study limited to a single text community would give a better view of the patterns of change than studies spanning a wide chronological and/or geographical range. It is suggested that the system of pronominal gender assignment went through a process of semantically based reorganization during this period, and that the resulting patterns are most usefully described using the model of a hierarchy or continuum of individuation (Dahl 1999a: 99; Siemund 2008: 140). The gender assignment of individual nouns is found to be remarkably regular, and the material seems to give no reason to assume a period of confusion between the Old and postmedieval English systems of gender assignment.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 2008 , pp. 445 - 473
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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