Simplification and complexification in the

Norwegian gender system

Guro Nore Fløgstad
Universitá degli studi di Genova
10.12.18
1. Gender changes in Norwegian/basic sociolinguistic tenets
2. Gender shift in Norwegian
3. Simplification vs. complexification
1. The synchronic state of the Norwegian gender system
 “The study of linguistic behavior
(1) Adonis saw himself in the mirror
Ethnicity as determined by sociocultural
Adonis seen hisself in the mirror factors”

(2) Jeg spiser BAnan Age, gender, social class,

Class ethnicity, etc.
Jeg spiser banAN

(3) Los chicos

Age Variants may be linguistically insignificant, but socially
Les chiques significant

(Chambers 2006: 3-4)

The study of variation and change
“Sociolingiuistics has been established as a distinct discipline for some years, comprehending the study of
the structure and the use of language in its social and cultural contexts” (Pride & Holmes 1972)

- Variationist sociolinguistics
- Labov’s department store study (1966)
- Fourth floor
- /r/ in preconsonantal and final position
- Saks fifth avenue; Macy’s; Klein

NB! Critical sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology,

etc.
Age as variable
● Routinely included in variationist studies
○ Children: Acquisition, stabilization of grammar
○ Adolescent: Innovators
○ Adults: Conventional users; stable grammars
○ Elderly: Decline
● In relation to linguistic change
○ Older speaker = older times (apparent time)
○ Younger speakers = innovation
Adolescence

● Industrialized society and institutionalized secondary-education: Age-homogeneous groups

● Flexibility of language norms; high tolerance of linguistic variation; socio-cognitive period of identity
search
● Increased use of new norms (levels off at about the age of 16/17); the adolescent peak

(3)
Los chicos
Les chiques

NB! Age grading

(Eckert 2003; Fløgstad & Lanza 2019; Kirkham and Moore 2013)
Grammatical gender in Norwegian
● 3 grammatical genders: feminine, masculine, neuter
● Gender assignment is mostly non-transparent, with some
phonological and semantic tendencies

(Trosterud 2001)
Changes in current gender systems
Rodina & Westergaard (2015; 2016) Busterud & Lohndal (2018)

● Merge in Tromsø and Sortland ● Merge in Trondheim

● Caused by sociolinguistic factors; ● More advanced than in other Norwegian
acquisition is key varieties
○ Syncretism ● Urban jumping?
○ Lack of transparency
Lødrup (2011)

● Merge in Oslo
● Not possible to claim that Oslo, especially
western dialects, have femininum
Towards a common gender
2. Gender shift in a Norwegian diminutive construction: The
“ei litta”-construction w/ Eli Anne Eiesland

(Fløgstad & Eiesland 2019)

Background

● Feminine determiner + diminutive with feminine agreement +

MASCULINE or NEUTER nouns
● Var det ei litta vits
Was that a.F little.F joke(M)
‘Was that a small joke?’
Previous research on ei litta
● Opsahl (2017): Qualitative study
○ Subjectification as a diachronic process
○ Hedging as a function
● Opdahl (2014): Grammaticalization
● Skommer (2016): diminutive in Norwegian is mainly
expressed lexically
Typological perspective
● Diminutive; typically also expresses affection

Casa - casita
Hermana - hermanita
Lugar - lugarcito

● Gender; expresses diminutive (fem), augmentative (masc)

● Gender shift (Di Garbo 2014)

aq-nmuˇs t-aq.nmuˇs-t
[M]SG-pot F-SG-pot-F
‘pot’ ‘small pot’
A structural polysemy model of the function of
diminutives
● Jurafsky (1996):
Research questions
1. Which nouns occur in the ei litta construction? (form)
2. What are the semantic and pragmatic effects of using the
construction? (function)
3. When did the construction increase in popularity? (timing)
Method
● Annotated corpus: NoWaC (Guevara 2010): 700 million
tokens
● Twitter corpus
● Survey: 35 students judged the difference in meaning of 5
minimal pairs with and without the ei litta construction
Results: corpus
● Corpus search yielded 90 instances after strict exclusion
● Both abstract and concrete nouns occured
● Most common nouns:
○ Nouns denoting time periods (hour, month, while)
○ Nouns denoting events (trip, break, vacation)
○ Nouns denoting artefacts/food (car, beer, house)
○ Nouns denoting people and animals (heartbreaker,
Brazilian, cat)
Most common nouns in the construction
Results: corpus
● We judged the meaning of the construction in the 90
instances
● Most common meaning: small size, hedge, affection
Function of the ei litta construction
Results: the Twitter corpus
● 1886 instances of the ei litta construction
● 2009-2018
Results: The Twitter corpus (N=1886)
Results: Twitter corpus
● Many of the nouns are loanwords with no assigned
gender in Norwegian
○ Productivity in code-switching
○ Not dialect feature
Results: survey
Skal vi ta ei litta/en liten øl?
(‘should we have a little beer?)

Som liten var hu ei litta/en liten hjerteknuser

(‘as a child she was a little heartbreaker’)

Dere gutter, jeg bare lurte på ei litta/en liten ting

(‘you guys, I was just wondering about something’)

Jeg legger ut ei litta/en liten selfie etter gjennomført treningsøkt

(‘I’ll post a selfie after I’ve completed my workout’)
Results: survey
● 25% of informants reported no difference in meaning
● 75 % of the informants reported some difference in
meaning:
○ Register-focused responses
○ Explicit, but unspecific reference to
semantic/pragmatic effect
○ Size-focused responses
○ Hedge reponses
○ Affection responses
Conclusion
● Ei litta + M/N nouns triggers meanings beyond diminution
(after Jurafsky 1996)
Conclusion
● Form
○ Diminutive and feminine
○ Gender shift (Di Garbo 2015); less rigid gender
assignment
● Function
○ Small size, hedge, affection
○ Well-known functions of diminutive and feminine
morphology
● Timing
○ Peaks in 2012
3. Simplification or complexification?
Simplification vs. complexification in language
change
Popular myths:

1. Some languages are more complex than others

2. Language change proceeds in the direction of simplification
1. Some languages are more complex than other
- Wrong, “Equality thesis” - All languages are equally complex
- But:
- Contact reduces complexity
- Extreme examples: creoles, pidgins
- Less extreme: Contact-induced simplification; post-threshold learning - > simplification
- Example: Norwegian multiethnolect: one-gender system
2. Language change causes simplification (only)
- Wrong!
- Change is also gain
- Semantic change
- Grammaticalization
- The creation of new grammatical material from lexical items
Norwegian gender: Simplification?
- Loss of feminine gender
- Three gender system -> two gender system
- Simplification at the categorical level
Norwegian gender: Complexification?
- Within the common gender: choice of definite suffixes -a/-en
- Ei litta-construction adds to the complexity of the Norwegian gender system
- New expression of diminution, affection
- Gender shift: New creativity in the gender system
- Gender less rigid?
Summing up
1. Gender changes
2. Gender shift
3. Categorical simplification/morphological/semantic complexification
Grazie!