LINGUIST List 22.3771 Tue Sep 27 2011 Diss: Insular Celtic/Linguistic Theories: Frenda: 'Gender in ...' Editor for this issue: Xiyan Wang <xiyanlinguistlist.org> New! Visit LL's Multitree project for over 1000 trees dynamically generated from scholarly hypotheses about language relationships:             http://multitree.linguistlist.org/ To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm. Directory         1.     Alessio Frenda , Gender in Insular Celtic: A functionalist account of variation and change in Irish and Welsh Message 1: Gender in Insular Celtic: A functionalist account of variation and change in Irish and Welsh Date: 20-Sep-2011 From: Alessio Frenda <alessio.frendagmail.com> Subject: Gender in Insular Celtic: A functionalist account of variation and change in Irish and Welsh E-mail this message to a friend Institution: Trinity College Dublin Program: Centre for Language and Communication Studies Dissertation Status: Completed Degree Date: 2011 Author: Alessio Salvatore Frenda Dissertation Title: Gender in Insular Celtic: A functionalist account of variation and change in Irish and Welsh Linguistic Field(s): Linguistic Theories Morphology Syntax Text/Corpus Linguistics Typology Language Family(ies): Insular Celtic Dissertation Director(s): Brian Nolan John Ibrahim Saeed Dissertation Abstract: In this study I look at grammatical gender in Insular Celtic to investigate a case of variation and change in a situation of language contact and obsolescence. The analysis is conducted on a corpus of spoken Irish and Welsh, which are taken as the two main representatives of this language group. A quantitative analysis of agreement variation is provided in order to achieve a better understanding of the system, which is described in detail; a model based on the theoretical framework of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is proposed. Presenting the findings of the quantitative analysis of the data, I show that whereas conservative varieties exhibit a fairly consistent agreement system across the board, contemporary varieties do not. I then discuss the problems raised by these findings, from both a typological and a theoretical perspective, and argue that an FDG-based model can account for the patterns found in the data while remaining consistent with typological considerations. Then, looking at anaphoric agreement in particular, I observe that the current FDG theory should be expanded in order to provide a better account of how the different types of information capable of influencing pronominal agreement forms are stored and represented, and propose a way to do so. Finally, I argue that the observed variation in gender agreement should be interpreted as the result of a process of resemantization triggered by the demise of gender agreement marking within the noun phrase, and that both language-internal factors and contact-induced processes (markedness and convergence, respectively) contribute to the shaping of the new agreement system, particularly as regards the overgeneralization of masculine agreement forms. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 27-Sep-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.