Der, die, das oder vielleicht ∅? Eine systematische Untersuchung der Genuszuweisung der Nomina auf -ə im Deutschen
Author
Summary, in English
The German gender system for nouns can pose challenges for non-native speakers. There are however tendencies that some distinct phonological endings are connected to a certain gender, i.e. nouns ending in -ə are mostly feminine. Nevertheless, the gender of the masculine and neutral nouns in this ending has previously not been systematically investigated. Furthermore, the possibility that German native speakers use so-called risk-avoiding strategies, avoid using a gender marker with these nouns since they are unsure of the correct gender assignment, has also not been considered.
In this thesis, the nouns ending in -ə are systematically investigated, both regarding their semantic and their heritage. An algorithm has been developed that classifies the gender usage of these nouns among German native speakers based on a text corpus consisting of 2.5 million usages of them on German Wikipedia.
Out of the 2526 investigated nouns ending in -ə, 549 are masculine and 132 neutral. Among these 681 non-feminine nouns, 85 percent have a gender assignment that is semantically motivated. An additional 13 percentage points are loanwords in a non-native -ə ending that has been preserved when the noun entered the German language. Merely 15 of the non-feminine nouns, 2 percent, have an arbitrary gender and a native -ə ending.
Based on the corpus analysis, it is to be concluded that, while not using the non-feminine nouns with an incorrect gender assignment, the German native speakers tend to avoid assigning them a gender.
In this thesis, the nouns ending in -ə are systematically investigated, both regarding their semantic and their heritage. An algorithm has been developed that classifies the gender usage of these nouns among German native speakers based on a text corpus consisting of 2.5 million usages of them on German Wikipedia.
Out of the 2526 investigated nouns ending in -ə, 549 are masculine and 132 neutral. Among these 681 non-feminine nouns, 85 percent have a gender assignment that is semantically motivated. An additional 13 percentage points are loanwords in a non-native -ə ending that has been preserved when the noun entered the German language. Merely 15 of the non-feminine nouns, 2 percent, have an arbitrary gender and a native -ə ending.
Based on the corpus analysis, it is to be concluded that, while not using the non-feminine nouns with an incorrect gender assignment, the German native speakers tend to avoid assigning them a gender.
Department/s
- German
- Master's Programme: Language and Linguistics
Publishing year
2024
Language
German
Full text
Document type
Student publication for Master's degree (two years)
Topic
- Languages and Literatures
Keywords
- grammatical gender
- Genuszuweisung
- deutsche Nomina
- German nouns
Supervisor
- Arthur Holmer (docent)
- Valéria Molnár