Abstract
Gender exponence in underived French nouns is particularly opaque. In this paper, we identify two subsystems of gender assignment: monogendered nouns, bi-gendered nouns; we show what they share and where they diverge. We show how the notorious floating final consonants of the language are handled in each subsystem for purposes of gender exponence. Our analysis and proposals develop in two steps: (a) we elaborate on the internal structure of √P, arguing that it is more richly articulated than had been assumed in previous work; (b) we propose that a gender feature sitting on n probes into its complement √P for valuation. Our proposal opens a range of selectional options of √P by n. These selectional options along with the probing device they feed, are shown to account for the French evidence.
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Notes
We will make use of two graphic conventions. First, because French spelling does not reflect pronunciation, all our examples are transcribed. Second, the gender of nouns may be indicated explicitly, e.g. ‘masculine’, ‘feminine’; or by means of the definite article: lə (masculine) or læ (feminine).
Space limitations prevent us from discussing the claim in Tucker et al. (1977) to the effect that generalizations connect the phonetic profile of a noun and its gender, but cf. Sect. 2 of Lowenstamm (2012) for a brief rebuttal and Fathi and Lowenstamm (in preparation) for fuller discussion.
ε̃ and yn are the respective versions of the masculine and feminine singular indefinite article.
A reader notes that ‘in many languages (including French), animate nouns with a fixed gender unrelated to natural gender like those in (8) are much, much rarer than those in (5), blunting the force of this evidence’. We see things differently. While the examples in (8) may illustrate a numerically ‘minor’ pattern (though many more examples could have been adduced), no clear notion is available of what counts as critical mass in the relevant respect. In fact, it is often the case that minor patterns crucially determine the selection of an analytical option (cf. our discussion of Kramer (2015) in Sect. 4). Finally, we note that the pattern under discussion figures prominently both in descriptive discussions, e.g. Grevisse and Goosse (2007) to mention only one, and recent theoretical elaborations as well, e.g. Atkinson (2015), Ihsane and Sleeman (2016), and Kramer (2015).
In French, the latency of final {n, m, ɲ} is manifested in the form of the nasalization of the preceding vowel.
With the remarks that follow on the adjunction of syntactic constituents, we make no claim to originality. Those remarks are merely intended as background for the presentation of our proposal.
To some extent, calling it F is a deliberate though harmless misnomer because the distribution of the property F denotes is in fact not limited to nouns. Indeed, in Sect. 5 we briefly review its pervasive presence in the agreement system of adjectives in gender and of verbs in number. In Fathi and Lowenstamm (in preparation), we simply call it Φ. In consequence of the cross-categorial distribution of the property under discussion, no attempt will be made here at speculating on its possible contribution to the interpretation of nouns specifically, cf. Percus (2010) for such an effort.
Our proposal that F (or +F) spells out as CV can be viewed in two ways. It can be viewed as a descriptively adequate characterization of the object under discussion. More interestingly, it can also be seen to follow directly from the view that CV is the typical spellout of morpho-syntactic information, cf. Arbaoui (2010), Bendjaballah (2012, 2014), Guerssel and Lowenstamm (1990), Lahrouchi (2001), Scheer (2011, 2012, 2014).
Had the adjunct been unmarked for any value, its mere absence on √P α would have constituted a minimal difference.
Here and elsewhere in this paper, small upper case expressions denote roots, not their associated phonological matrices.
We do not doubt that a more insightful (representational) account of the ambivalent behavior of the adjunct will eventually be identified.
We only provide the subset of Atkinson’s licensing conditions relevant to the cases discussed here.
Atkinson admits to remaining agnostic as to why the final consonant of √ŠAT floats in lə ša.
Cf. Ihsane and Sleeman (2016) for discussion.
This account represents our extrapolation from Kramer’s treatment of Spanish and we do not know how she would handle the fact that the final consonant of feminine šæt is silent in masculine ša.
This pattern may be called ‘minor’ but it is very crucial to the point discussed here. Indeed, we know of no other evidence from French that would cause the learner or the analyst to decisively select a grammar organized along the lines of Kramer (2015) rather than along the lines of Atkinson (2015).
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Gilles Boyé, Noam Faust, Ruth Kramer and Jamal Ouhalla for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks to Natascha Müller for inviting us to present our work at the Gender and Number in Romance Workshop at the University of Wuppertal (October 2015). Fathi is grateful to her colleagues in the OmanSaM Project (ANR-13-BSH2-0001, Sabrina Bendjaballah, Principal Investigator) for stimulation and support.
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Fathi, R., Lowenstamm, J. The gender assignment pattern of French nouns. Morphology 26, 477–509 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-016-9287-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-016-9287-2