Complex possessive pronouns in West Flemish and German

DEMONIE, Anne-Li and Pamela GORYCZKA. Complex possessive pronouns in West Flemish and German. Quaderni Di Linguistica E Studi Orientali. 2023, vol. 9, No 1, p. 59-79. ISSN 2421-7220. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.36253/qulso-2421-7220-15159.

Basic information

• Original name: Complex possessive pronouns in West Flemish and German
• Authors: DEMONIE, Anne-Li (56 Belgium, guarantor, belonging to the institution) and Pamela GORYCZKA (40 Austria).
• Edition: Quaderni Di Linguistica E Studi Orientali, 2023, 2421-7220.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Article in a journal
• Field of Study: 60203 Linguistics
• Country of publisher: Italy
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• RIV identification code: RIV/00216224:14210/23:00131800
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.36253/qulso-2421-7220-15159
• Keywords in English: agreement; gender; Germanic; nanosyntax; possessive pronouns
• Tags: rivok
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

In this article we discuss a contrastive, morphological agreement pattern exhibited by singular possessive pronouns in West Flemish and German. While West Flemish zen (‘his’) and eur (‘her’) require a suffix -en to mark masculine agreement, they are unmarked for feminine agreement. Conversely, German sein (‘his’) and ihr (‘her’) require a suffix -e to mark feminine agreement, but they are unmarked for masculine agreement. Put differently, in both languages only one gender is marked for agreement, and West Flemish marks a different gender than German. To account for this intra- and cross-linguistic variation, we argue for a fine-grained analysis, couched in Nanosyntax (Starke 2009 et seq.), of the possessive pronouns and their agreement markers.

Links

• MUNI/A/1249/2022, interní kód MU: Name: Lexikon a gramatika češtiny III - 2023

Investor: Masaryk University