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Coordinating Gender: What Can Coordinate Structure Agreement Tell Us about Gender?

Publication date: 19.04.2016

Studies in Polish Linguistics, Volume 11 (2016), Vol. 11, Issue 1, pp. 1 - 25

https://doi.org/10.4467/23005920SPL.16.001.4816

Authors

Miloje Despić
Cornell University, Ithaca
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Titles

Coordinating Gender: What Can Coordinate Structure Agreement Tell Us about Gender?

Abstract

This paper examines gender agreement with coordinate structures in Serbian, focusing exclusively on coordinate phrases with singular conjuncts. I discuss in detail four unexpected and challenging facts about coordinate structure gender agreement and provide a unified account of them. I argue that a participle or predicative adjective agreeing with a coordinate phrase takes the default masculine form either when the coordinate phrase contains conflicting gender information, which can sometimes surprisingly happen even when all conjuncts have identical gender specifications, or when at least one of the conjuncts is not marked for a gender value. On the bases of behavior of neuter, I also propose that gender in Serbian (and possibly other Slavic languages) should be represented in terms of binary features [±masculine] and [±feminine].

References

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Information

Information: Studies in Polish Linguistics, Volume 11 (2016), Vol. 11, Issue 1, pp. 1 - 25

Article type: Original article

Titles:

English:

Coordinating Gender: What Can Coordinate Structure Agreement Tell Us about Gender?

Authors

Cornell University, Ithaca

Published at: 19.04.2016

Article status: Open

Licence: None

Percentage share of authors:

Miloje Despić (Author) - 100%

Article corrections:

-

Publication languages:

English