Open AccessNo Gender in ‘Gender Agreement’: On Declension Classes and Gender in Serbo-Croatian
Author(s) -
Boban Arsenijević
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
ca' foscari japanese studies. religion and thought/ca' foscari japanese studies. religion and thought
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2610-900X
pISSN - 2610-9417
DOI - 10.30687/bes/0/2021/01/001
Subject(s) - presupposition , linguistics , realisation , agreement , negation , class (philosophy) , computer science , philosophy , artificial intelligence , physics , quantum mechanics
The present paper argues for a view of gender agreement without either grammatical or natural gender being represented as syntactic features. Rather than deriving declension classes in terms of realisation, I postulate them as the only relevant feature that is lexically specified on the noun. Agreement copies the declension class and triggers presuppositions. When these presuppositions clash with those already active in the discourse, default agreement is realised. The paper moreover provides a quantitative analysis of semantic correlates of declension classes and a novel analysis of SC declension classes.