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Pronominal Gender in Dutch: Apparent-Time Change in Lexical versus Semantic Agreement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2025

Kristel Doreleijers Open the ORCID record for Kristel Doreleijers [Opens in a new window] ,
Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck Open the ORCID record for Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck [Opens in a new window]  and
Marjo Van Koppen Open the ORCID record for Marjo Van Koppen [Opens in a new window]
Kristel Doreleijers*
Affiliation:
KNAW Meertens Institute/LiME Tilburg University/DCU
Jeroen Van Craenenbroeck
Affiliation:
KNAW Meertens Institute/LiME KU Leuven/CRISSP
Marjo Van Koppen
Affiliation:
KNAW Meertens Institute/LiME Utrecht University/ILS
*
Corresponding author: Kristel Doreleijers; Email: kristel.doreleijers@meertens.knaw.nl
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Abstract

This article discusses pronominal gender agreement in Dutch. Based on a sentence completion task filled out by about 10,000 speakers, we provide evidence for the claim that there is an ongoing shift from lexical to semantic agreement in Dutch, even in a formal register. Results of correspondence and cluster analyses indicate that nouns with the same degree of individuation group together. Furthermore, the analyses reveal an age effect, with three distinct speaker groups that follow a specific gender agreement pattern. Younger speakers are more semantically oriented than older speakers, who are more lexically oriented, which points to apparent-time language change.

Keywords

pronominal genderDutchlexical agreementsemantic agreementapparent-time changeage-related variation

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Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , June 2025 , pp. 190 - 220
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Society for Germanic Linguistics

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