The loss of feminine gender in Norwegian: a dialect comparison

Abstract It is well known that grammatical gender systems may change historically. Previous research has documented loss of the feminine gender in several Norwegian dialects, including those spoken in Oslo and Tromsø (Lødrup in Maal og Minne 2:120–136, 2011; Rodina and Westergaard in J Ger Linguist 27(2):145–187 2015). In these dialects, the change is characterized by replacement of the feminine indefinite article ei (e.g., ei bok ‘a book’) with the masculine form en (e.g., en bok). Child and adult native speakers of the Trondheim dialect (N = 71) participated in two production experiments tha... Mehr ...