In this paper, it is argued that, although Dutch gender assignment is not systematically organized along semantic lines in the lexicon, the gender system has a semantic basis. This semantic basis involves a distinction between masculine/common gender associated with a high degree of individuation on the one hand, and neuter gender associated with a low degree of individuation, on the other hand. This is in line with Audring (2006, 2009), who found that Dutch pronouns often show semantic agreement along these lines. It is shown that the same semantic distinction between the genders can also be found in the nominal domain. It surfaces particularly in cases where lexically stored gender does not play a role. The semantic distinction arguably goes back to Proto-Indo-European. It is argued that, since nominal gender has become an invariable, lexically stored feature of nouns, the semantic basis of nominal gender assignment has become disrupted. This causes a con-flict between lexical and semantic gender agreement in pronouns. It is suggested that the surfacing of semantic agreement in this conflict is connected with a reduced marking of lexical gender on adnominal elements.

In some Norwegian dialects, such as older Oslo dialect, the noun mamma ‘mother’ unexpectedly appears to be masculine. The Nordreisa dialect (Northern Norwegian) goes one step further. The word looks like it is masculine, but only in the definite form. This is an unusual “split” because gender mixture is normally based on number, not definiteness (but we find some few corroborative examples in other Norwegian dialects and different, but converging evidence on the Web). The Nordreisa example of mamma is unusual also because agreement targets are affected differently. The preference is for masculine agreement within the noun phrase, but for feminine agreement outside it. This is, therefore, an intriguing example since it combines a split based on definiteness with different gender require-ments according to different agreement targets. On careful analysis, and given strict adherence to the classical, agreement-based definition of gender, the unusual behavior of mamma turns out to conform to the Agreement Hierarchy.*

This paper follows on recent work (Iverson & Salmons 2004, 2007; Kiparsky 2005, 2006) seeking to resolve Kock's 1888 paradox intro-duced in his celebrated “period theory” of Old Norse i-umlaut. The basic finding is this: In paradigms where a phonological innovation has been rendered opaque by the operation of other sound changes, restructuring of the base form incorporates rather than derives the results of the innovation as it dies out; but if the innovation remains transparent in certain other paradigms, its expiration enables reversion to the antecedent phonological form. Both patterns can be subsumed under the traditional rubric of analogy, resulting in allomorphically uniform paradigms, but the former generalizes a sound change to con-texts in which it never occurred naturally, whereas the latter actually undoes, or reverses, a sound change.*

It is argued that Cimbrian German requires reference to the natural class of affricates and fricatives and that this grouping is captured by analyzing both sets of sounds as [+continuant]. This finding is problematic for theories that treat affricates as strident stops without a [+continuant] component.*

In Old Norse poetry, there is a syntactic difference between bound clauses (subordinate clauses and main clauses introduced by a con-junction) and unbound clauses (main clauses not introduced by a conjunction). In bound clauses, the finite verb is often placed late in the sentence, violating the V2 requirement upheld in prose. In unbound clauses, the V2 requirement is normally adhered to, but in fornyrðislag poetry, late placement of the finite verb is occasionally found. Hans Kuhn explained these instances as a result of influence from West Germanic poetry. The present article argues that these instances can be explained as a remnant of the Proto-Norse word order, and that this explanation is better supported by the data.*

The Norwegian pronoun det ‘it, that’ is basically third person neuter singular. Under certain conditions, it can have antecedents that are not neuter singular (for example, Marit kjøpte en kylling—Detkjøpte John også ‘Marit bought a chicken.masc—John bought one too’). Used this way, the pronoun does not refer to the same object as its antecedent; Borthen 2003 refers to it as a “type anaphor.” This article argues that type anaphora are not a unitary phenomenon. There are two groups with very different properties. One group realizes what was called surface anaphora in Hankamer & Sag 1976. The other group has a generic or eventive interpretation.*

Recent studies on spoken Dutch emphasize an ongoing recategorization of pronominal gender on semantic grounds, with no apparent con-nection to lexical gender (Audring 2006, 2009; De Vogelaer 2006, 2009; De Vogelaer & De Sutter 2010; De Vogelaer & De Vos 2011). In fact, gender instability is not confined to the pronominal domain: Some Dutch nouns display more than one lexical gender (de/het-nouns), a phenomenon that has not been linked to the process of pronominal re-semanticization. The aim of this paper is to identify the common semantic and pragmatic basis for pronominal gender agreement and the choice of a determiner for double gender nouns.

Based on two sociolinguistic field studies from 2003 and 2009, this paper discusses the language attitudes of High German speakers (H-speakers) toward Low German (the L-variety) in the county of Bentheim, a diglossic speech community in northwestern Germany. While language attitudinal studies are largely absent from the sociolin-guistic corpus in Germany and from Low German research altogether, diglossic studies largely focus on the L-variety and its speakers and evolution. This paper is one of the first attempts to analyze the H-speakers’ perceptions and evaluations of the L-variety over a longer period of time within the fields of diglossia and Low German.

This paper aims to shed light on regularities underlying German stress assignment. The results of a pseudoword production task suggest that rhyme complexity of the final syllable is a strong predictor of main stress position in German. We also found that antepenult rhyme complexity and orthographic rhyme structure have significant effect on stress assignment. In general, the effects seem to be probabilistic rather than categorical. Our results suggest that phonological theories of German word stress need to allow for multiple probabilistic factors, including syllabic structure of all stressable syllables and orthographic coding.*