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Gender assignment in Old English

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DOI: 10.1075/cilt.295.08vez

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 Gender assignment in Old English

Letizia Vezzosi
University of Perugia

Old English has a three-gender formal assignment system, there are more
the scanty instances where the same noun shows more than one gender.
The phenomenon has been so far generally neglected both in textbooks and
linguistic literature. In the present paper, the author will classify the Old English
data, selected through a corpus analysis of electronic corpora and complete
literary works on the base of a comparison with relevant data from typological
investigations and historical linguistic studies, and show that Old English
gender variance depends on semantic and pragmatic factors that interfere with
grammatical gender assignment, a linguistic fact that is cross-linguistically
common. More precisely, besides the cross-linguistically frequent semantic traits
such as [± animate] [± human], gender assignment in Old English seems to
be sensitive semantic roles. This parameter does not conflict with the previous
semantic ones, since all of them can be derived from the more general feature
[± individuated].

1. Introduction

Old English is undisputedly said to have a grammatical gender, i.e., it resorts to

a formal gender assignment system according to Corbett’s definition of linguistic
gender: formal – namely morphological – rules determine whether a noun is femi-
nine, masculine or neuter regardless of its meaning.
This system is not fully consistent, and shows a significant number of excep-
tions, where nouns appear to have more than one gender or a different gender from
their grammatical one. At the letter A in Clark’s Old English Dictionary 29 out of 72
nouns have more than one gender. This phenomenon was noticed at the end of the
19th century (cf. Fleischhacker 1889), although neither of the standard grammars

F S
. I would like to thank Prof. Koenig, Prof. Rosenbach and two anonimous reviewers for their

PRO O
helpful comments. Any remaining inadequacies or mistake are of course my own.

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(Campbell 1959; & Brunner 1962) hints to it, but has so far received little if any
attention. At most it has been considered as either the outcome of language contact
interference (Latin influence) or scribal error (Fisiak 1975; Mitchell 1985 & Wełna
1978; etc.).
The topic of the present chapter is exactly those gender assignment deviations
from the formal system, with the exception of borrowings, loanwords and words
formed on a Latin pattern. We intend to investigate whether it is a random phe-
nomenon, due to scribal misunderstanding or error, or whether it shows some
kind of consistency on the basis of which one can figure out rules that can account
for gender assignment aberrations.
To do so, Old English textual data, gathered from the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary by
Bosworth and Toller (1898), the Toronto on-line Old English Dictionary and the Hel-
sinki Corpus, will be compared with relevant data from typological ­investigations
and historical linguistic or Indo-European studies, and consequently classified ac-
cording to the type of gender assignment they take. This approach will prove to be
a valuable tool for identifying coherence in gender inconsistency. Indeed, it clearly
reveals that gender variance is not arbitrary, but depends on ­various semantic and
pragmatic factors that may interfere with the Old English grammatical gender as-
signment system, i.e., the Old English noun classification. More precisely, besides
semantic traits such as [± animate] [± human], further semantic differentiations,
significant from an anthropological or cultural point of view, such as [± contain-
ing] [± power], are related to gender variability. Whereas semantic features such as
[± animate] or [± power] play roles in gender assignment systems in the languages
of the world, gender assignment in Old English seems to be sensitive to another
unexpected feature, namely semantic roles: more precisely, masculine and feminine
genders are preferred when the noun plays the role of an agent, whereas neuter
gender is selected for the patient. This parameter like the other semantic features
interfering with the Old English grammatical gender assignment will be shown to
derive from the same and more general principle [± individuated]. Interestingly
enough, this is the same macro-factor which is nowadays responsible for gender
variation in spoken English varieties and dialects.

1.1 Gender definition

Before starting the core discussion, it may be worth recalling what we mean by
the term ‘gender’. It is certain that gender is a category of any nominal system in the

F S
. Campbell (1959 § 569 and refs) and Brunner (1962 § 236Anm) do not ignore the

PRO O
­phenomenon, but mention it only in relation to late confusion in inflections which in turn
contributed to it.

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languages of the world; less certain is how to define what it is. Since Hockett pro-
posed to define genders as “classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated
words” (Hockett 1958: 231), gender has been associated with noun classification and
with agreement in view of the fact that gender only exists if grammatical forms with
variable gender (e.g., adjectives, pronouns, numerals and so on) regularly adopt
forms to agree with grammatical forms of invariable gender, usually nouns (Fodor
1959: 2). If the determining criterion of linguistic gender is agreement, then saying
that a language has three genders implies that there are three classes of nouns which
are syntactically distinguished by the agreements they take.
The way in which nouns are allotted to different genders is an intriguing ques-
tion. If agreement can be used as a test to establish the gender of a given noun,
native speakers must know the gender of nouns to produce correct sentences.
According to Corbett (1991: 7), gender assignment depends on two basic types
of information about the noun: its form and its meaning and accordingly formal
and semantic gender assignment systems can be distinguished.
Semantic systems are those systems where semantic factors are sufficient on
their own to account for the assignment. In semantic terms, nouns can be divided
into those denoting animates and those denoting inanimates; the animates can
be subdivided into those which are sex-differentiable and those which are not,
the former in turn being subdivided into male and female. A case in point is the
Present Day English gender system, where words like woman or girl or cow are
feminine only for the reason that they refer to biologically female entities, man
or boy or bull are masculine since their referents are male, and book, table, kitten
and so on are neuter, because either they name inanimate entities, and therefore
biologically neither female nor male, or their sexuality is irrelevant.

. In some languages gender markers are also present in verbal forms, e.g., the Bantu form
a-likuja ‘came’ has the marker a- which marks gender 1/2 singular, in Arabic there is feminine vs.
masculine agreement forms in the verb, but in a way also in Italian: è andato/a ‘he/she has gone’.

. Corbett (1991: 33) claims that “there are no syntactic systems”. By ‘syntactic systems’ he
means types of gender assignment rules which determine the gender of a noun on exclusively
syntactic criteria, such as “nouns which take prepositional complements are neuter” (Corbett
1991: 33), according to which a noun is neuter only if it governs prepositions, but it is not neu-
ter in all the other syntactic environments. But we will show later that syntax can play a role in
gender assignment, at least in the old stages of Indo-European languages.

. In non-strict semantic systems, besides the core semantic distinctions [± human] and
­[± animate], other concept associations may be responsible for noun classification (see also
Lakoff 1987): [± harmful], [± power] [± concrete] etc. (Corbett 1991: 16–32). Given that similar

F S
distinctions are found in languages of totally unrelated families, classifications of gender seman-

PRO O
tic systems since the 19th century have been proposed according to the patterns of distinctions
involved (see de la Grasserie 1989: 614–15).

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In a sense, all gender systems are semantic in that there is a semantic core even
in formal gender assignment systems (Aksenov 1984: 17–18); for example, in Old
Germanic languages, nouns with animate and more constantly human referents
very rarely conflict with their formal gender. Nevertheless, in formal systems,
­irrespective of any semantic-biased considerations, the rules for gender assign-
ment primarily depend on the form of nouns rather than their meaning. In those
systems, information for gender assignment may in turn be word-structure, com-
prising derivation and inflection (morphology) and sound-structure (phonology).
Qatar (i.e., an East Cushitic language) is a language where gender assignment
depends on phonological criteria, since nouns that end in an accented vowel are
feminine (e.g., baxà ‘daughter’, catò ‘help’) whereas all the others are masculine
(e.g., bàxa ‘son’, baànta ‘trumpet’); Russian can be an example of morphologi-
cal gender systems, since the gender of a noun can be predicted on the basis of
its declensional type: e.g., nouns of declensional type I are masculine, nouns of
declensional types II and III are feminine and all the others are neuter (Corbett
1991: 36). In German derivation suffixes determine the gender of a noun: e.g.,
nouns ending with -heit, -keit, -ung, -schaft, -erei, are feminine, diminutives in
-lein, -chen are neuter as well as collective with ge-prefix and -e suffix, and deriva-
tives with -ismus are masculine. Here the gender is clear from the noun itself and
not only from the agreeing forms: this phenomenon is known as overt gender.
Since the relationship with the meaning of the word is accessory, in such systems
there is a sort of arbitrariness in gender assignment and possible incompatibility
between sex and gender: noun x is feminine because it takes agreement y; in order
to produce agreement y correctly the native speaker must simply know that noun
x is feminine.
Gender is defined as a grammatical category proper to nominal systems.
However, as a grammatical category it has a special status. With regard to other
grammatical categories, such as tense and mood in verbal systems or number and
case in nominal systems, there is always an alternative choice inasmuch as a verb
can be either present or past, either indicative or subjunctive, and a noun can be
either singular or plural in the nominative rather than genitive case, and so on.

. For a system to be exclusively formal, there would also be no correlation between semantics
and the genders established in this way: “the distribution of the nouns across the genders would
be completely random as far as their meaning was concerned. Such a system is not found in any
natural language” (Corbett 1991: 63).

. Starting from the assumption that the agreement evidence is what counts as far as gender

F S
is concerned, there is the need to distinguish the sets in which nouns are divided (controller

PRO O
genders) from the agreement forms found (target genders).

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On the contrary, nominal gender allows no choice: as a rule, the gender of a noun
cannot possibly be equally masculine or feminine or neuter.
Moreover, not only is gender visible through agreement, but also the func-
tion of gender itself seems to be reduced to agreement, unlike the other nominal
­categories which, while showing agreement, are not reduced to it.

2. Gender in Old English

In Old English grammars and textbooks it is commonly stated that Old English
has a formal system of gender assignment, like the other Old Germanic languages.
Specifically there are three grammatical genders, i.e., feminine, masculine and
neuter, whose assignment is claimed to be at most semantically unmotivated.
Thus, different words referring to the same object can have different genders, as
shown in the Old English pair ecg (f.) sweord (m.) for ‘sword’; the nouns wifman or
wif (both for ‘woman’) are masculine and neuter respectively.
As in Modern German, the Old English formal system is based not on the
sound-form of the noun, but on its morphological structure. In other words, the
gender of a noun is dependent on the presence of derivational suffixes or on the
declensional type. Thus, suffixes such as -lac or -et mark neuter gender (e.g., bo-
clac ‘decree’, þeowet ‘slavery’), -ð/ðu(*-iþō), -ung, *-īn, * -jō, -nes, -estre and -wist
belong to the feminine gender (e.g., mægðmaiden’, hræglung ‘clothing’, strengu
‘strength’, þiefþu ‘theft’, clænes ‘purity’, lærestre ‘teacher’, huswist ‘household’), and
-aþ/-oð, -dom, -end, -els, -ere, -had, -scipe masculine (e.g., fiscoþ ‘fishing’, cynedom
‘reign’, hælend ‘Saviour’, cnyttels ‘sinew’, leornere ‘disciple’, cildhad ‘childhood’, burg-
scipe ‘township’). Analogously, some thematic classes determine the gender of the
nouns following their inflectional patterns: e.g., strong declension in -o- or in -a-
only comprise nouns of masculine/neuter and feminine nouns respectively (e.g.,
stan-stanes pl. stanas ‘stone’ or wif-wifes pl. wifu as an -a-stem noun vs. giefu-giefe pl.
giefa-e ‘gift’ an -o-stem noun).
In Old English, gender is a covert and selectional parameter, to use Whorf ’s
terminology (1945: 3ff.), since it has no overt exponent, but becomes visible only
by selecting a specific exponent for case and number both inside and outside the
NP. In the following examples the predicative strongly inflected adjective tilu, the
attributive weakly inflected brade and the deteminer seo appear in their feminine

. It should be recalled that the gender of most Old English nouns is not predictable from

F S
their morphology: e.g., a strong noun-ending with a consonant in the nominative singular could

PRO O
belong to any of the three genders.

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form to agree with the singular number, the nominative case and the feminine
gender of the noun lind, although the referent of lind is inanimate; for similar
­reasons, wimman (m.) selects the masculine form of the determiner se.
(1) a. Seo brade lind wæs tilu and ic hire lufode.
“That broad shield was good and I loved it.”
b. [Ch 1447] Þurwif hatte se wimman… . Þa tymde Wulfstan hine to
Æþelstane æt Sunnanbyrig.
“The woman’s name was Th… . Then W. called her [as witness]
for Æthelstan at S.”
c. [ÆCHom ii.66.22] Babilonia … is gereht ‘gescyndnys’. Seo getacnað helle.
“Babilonia is described as ‘shame’. It denotes hell.”

As is clear in (1a–c), gender is also made explicit in terms of gender-specific pro-

nominal reference by personal pronouns: hire is feminine because it refers to lind
which is feminine, hine is masculine because wimman is grammatically masculine,
although semantically referring to a female being, and the demonstrative seo is
feminine because Babilonia is a burg ‘town’ which is feminine.
As undeniable as the grammatical nature of the gender system in Old English
might be, there are more than random instances of ‘unexpected’, ‘ungrammatical’
gender assignment as well as nouns of unstable gender (Matasović 2004). This
phenomenon was noticed a long time ago, but for Old English it has so far been
analysed mainly in relation to borrowings (Wełna 1978) and Latin calques, where
one can claim that the uncertainty in gender assignment can be ascribed either to
clashes between the source language and the target language or to such processes
as semantic analogy10 and concept associations (Fleishhacker 1889).
Gender fluctuation is not limited to these cases, but also concerns words of
Germanic origin, completely unrelated to any foreign language influence. There
are three types of gender deviance from the norm: (a) some words show gen-
der variability outside and inside the NP (i.e., determiner, adjective, participles,
­relative and personal pronouns) inasmuch as they may agree with the natural
gender of the referent, in contrast with their grammatical gender; (b) related
words with morphological differentiation and accordingly different gender may
express ­ difference in perspective of their semantic content; and (c) more than
one gender is assigned to the same word, apparently without any motivation or
consequence.

. In the present chapter borrowings and Latin-based calques are objects of analysis. See also
Wełna (1978) who considers the conflicting factors involved in the assignment of some fifty
loanwords from Latin and Old Icelandic into Old English, or Fisiak (1975).

O F S
. Semantic analogy concerns the loanword taking the gender of a noun of similar meaning

PRO
already in the language.

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2.1 First type of gender deviance: nature over grammar

The (a) type of deviance concerns the predominance of the natural gender of the
referent over grammatical gender. This phenomenon can take place both within
the NP, where variable gender words such as determiners and adjectives agree
with the natural gender of the referent of the head noun – e.g., (2a–b) – and outside
the NP, where the choice of the pronominal elements depends on the meaning
of the antecedent both in the case of anaphoric reference – e.g., (3a–b) – and rela-
tive pronoun – e.g., (3c). This happens quite frequently when grammatical gender
and semantic gender conflict. Consequently it is not surprising that such deviance
mainly concerns words with animate and human referents, and less frequently
nouns referring to inanimate entities.
(2) a. [Judg 4.21] seo (f.) wifman (m)
“the woman”
b. [Cd. 32 Gen. 691] He hogode on ðæt (n.) micle morþ (m.) me forweorpan,
forlætan and forlædan.
“He (the devil) intended to throw me in the great death, to abandon
and seduce”
a. [ÆCHom i.14.21] geworhte of ðam ribbe ænne (m.acc.) wifman (m.) and
(3)
axode Adam hu heo (f.) hatan sceolde
“[he] created from the rib a woman and asked Adam how to call her”
b. [ÆCHom i. 20.31] Wyrc þe nu ænne arc … gehref hit eall
“Prepare now an arc … roof it all”
c. [ÆCHom I.24.22.] to anum mædene (n.) … seo (f.) wæs Maria gehaten
“to one virgin … whose name was Maria”

As for anaphoric reference, the frequency of semantic gender assignment is

­directly proportional to the distance between the antecedent and the pronominal
element: in (4a) wisdom is modified by an accusative masculine determiner and in
its immediate sentence it is referred to by means of hiene, i.e., accusative masculine
pronoun, as one would expect since it is a masculine singular; in the following
sentence, where the personal pronoun is quite separated from its antecedent, the
word wisdom is referred to by means of hit, namely a pronoun that agrees with
the natural gender of the referent [– animate]; in (4b), whereas inside the NP the
determiner agrees with the grammatical gender of its head, the referring pronoun
agrees with the natural gender of the referent of wif.
a. [CP 3.24] þæt ðu þone wisdom ðe ðe God sealde ðær ðær ðu hiene
(4)
befæstan mæge befæste. Geðenc hwelc witu us ða becomon for ðisse worulde,
ða ða we hit nohwæðer ne selfe ne lufodon ne eac oþrum monnum ne lefdon …
“that wisdom which God gave to you where you may implant it there

O F S
­implant it. Think what punishment would come to us for this world if we

PRO
did not love it nor allowed others to do so”

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b. [Genesis 2382–2383] þa þæt wif ahloh wereda drihtnes nalles glædlice,

ac heo gearum frod
“then the woman laughed at the lord of hosts, by no means kindly, for
she, [was] advanced in years”

In all those cases there is a conflict between ‘semantic’ agreement and ‘syntactic’
agreement: a linguistic fact cross-linguistically quite frequent in formal gender
assignment systems, when the grammatical gender and the meaning of the noun
clash. Especially in the case of pronominal gender, Moravcsik (1978) had al-
ready noticed that in noun phrase external agreement (e.g., agreement between
nouns and verbs or anaphoric pronouns) grammatical gender agreement is of-
ten optional.11 In his typological studies, by handling many instances of gender
divergence and fluctuation between semantic and syntactic agreement, Corbett
individuates four types of agreement targets, arranges them into a hierarchy
of agreement (5), and formulates constraints about the possible agreement
patterns, as in (6a–c).
(5) Agreement hierarchy (Corbett 1991: 204)
Attributive > Predicative > Relative Pronoun > Personal Pronoun
(6)
a. As we move rightwards along the hierarchy, the likelihood of semantic
agreement will increase monotonically (that is with no intervening
decrease). (Corbett 1991: 204)
b. If parallel targets show different agreement forms, then the further target
will show semantic agreement. (Corbett 1991: 235)
c. For any particular target type, the further it is removed from its controller,
the greater the likelihood of semantic agreement. (Corbett 1991: 235)

These are also the agreement targets present in Old English and the discrepan-
cies noted above are explicable in terms of Corbett’s maxims (6a–c). In a typo-
logical perspective, then, Old English does not differ from many other languages
with formal gender systems, at least with regard to this kind of gender fluctuation.
When grammatical gender is not as expected, it is only because the referential
gender of the noun overrides the lexical gender (Dahl 2000: 105–106). Like other
languages in the world, this also happens in Old English when the morphology of
the noun does not match its semantic content, and accordingly the gender of the
variable gender words may be determined by the gender of the conceptualised
referent.

. Moravcsik (1978) distinguishes noun-phrase external agreement from noun phrase inter-

F S
nal agreement (i.e., inflection of nouns, relative pronouns, adjectives, demonstratives, posses-

PRO O
sives, articles and numerals) where grammatical gender agreement is obligatory.

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2.2 Second type of gender deviance: semantic perspective

Effective as it might appear, the predominance of referential gender over lexical
gender cannot account for the second type of gender deviance in Old English,
where the same lexemes or groups of etymologically and formally related words
show different genders completely unrelated to the natural gender of their refer-
ents. Although less frequent, this phenomenon is intriguing, especially because it
is found in Proto-Indo-European and all the other Old Germanic languages.
This type of gender variation concerns cases such as the triad lig (m.) – liget
(n.) – ligetu (f.) or the pair list (f.) – list (m.), where there seems to be no semantic
difference in correspondence to gender fluctuation. Looking directly at their tex-
tual occurrences, however, it is possible to discern a slight, but consistent variation
in meaning. Substantially, although, for instance, lig (m.) – liget (n.) – ligetu (f.) are
all related to the idea of ‘fire’, not all of them express ‘fire’: lig (m.) appears to refer to
‘flame’, whereas liget (n.) specifically means ‘fire’ and ligetu (f.) denotes ‘lightening’.
Similar differentiation of meanings turns up in pairs like tungol (n.) – tungol (m.),
where the noun, if masculine, denominates the single items, i.e., ‘star, planet’, that
constitute the entity, i.e., ‘constellation, firmament’, referred to by the same noun
but in neuter gender. The alternation may involve both animate genders: for exam-
ple, leod (f.) ‘people, nation’ – leod (m.) ‘man’, mircels (f.) ‘seal’ – mircels (m.) ‘mark’,
list (f.) ‘cleverness, art’ – list (m.) ‘skill’, or traht (f.) ‘exposition, treatise’ – traht (m.)
‘passage’. Here, again, the masculine gender turns out to express a single example of
the general concept, whereas the feminine expresses a collective view.12
This linguistic fact is observable in other Old Germanic languages: in Old Norse
(Gordon 1988) grunnr (m.) means ‘ground or sea floor, bottom’ whereas grunn (n.)
indicates ‘shallows’ and grund (f.) a ‘grassy area, ground’; in Old High German
(Leiss 2003) luft may have different meanings, namely luft (f.) ‘sky’, luft (m.) ‘gentle
breeze’ and luft (n.) ‘air’ or felis (m.) ‘piece of rock’ and felisa (f.) ‘rock as substance’.
Such correspondence between different genders and different meanings was
not unknown in the old stages of Indo-European languages: it was already noticed
by Schmidt (1889) and Brugmann (1889) who related it to the origin of grammati-
cal gender in Indo-European. In this line of arguing, Delbrück (1893: 117) claimed
that “Die häufige Doppelgeschlechtigkeit dürfte sich darus erklären, dass in der
Urzeit der Prozess der Nachahmung noch nicht derart abgeschlossen war, dass
für jedes Wort ein festes Geschlecht bestimmt gewesen wäre.” Hence, ­instability

. Here, we are not confronted with such cases as those cross-linguistically observed where
different genders correspond to different meanings. In Ojibwa mettik means ‘tree’ and is animate,

F S
or it can mean ‘piece of wood’ and is then inanimate (Bloomfield 1957: 31–2). In the Old English

PRO O
instance, there is only one ‘idea’, but different perspectives from which it is conceptualised.

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of gender assignment was traditionally considered to reflect an intermediate stage

between the Proto-Indo-European system which opposes common gender to neu-
ter gender (Brugmann 1897; Schwink 2004 & Sieburg 1997) and a subsequent
stage with three gender oppositions. Initially every noun could be inflected with
three different nominal endings, i.e., assigned to three genders, which modify the
meaning of the noun in a specific way (Lehmann 1958): masculine had ‘singula-
tive’ quality, neuter was a nominal resultative and feminine a collective.
What has been observed in Old English examples, as well as in the other Old
Germanic languages, could be a reflex of the original Indo-European categorical
meanings of the three gender opposition, before the gender oppositions formally
dissolved and the corresponding semantic oppositions consequently broke down,
giving rise to grammatical gender.

3. Third type: more than one gender related to [± individuated]

The most immediate case of multiple gender pertains to those nouns like baby,
doctor and so on, otherwise called ‘nouns of common gender’ (Corbett 1991: 181).
In Old English, such nouns have different derivative suffixes that express gender
difference: thus the word ‘wolf ’ appears as wulf following the a-stem declension
when referring to both to wolves and to he-wolf, but is wylf, i.e., jo-stem noun
derived from wulf if feminine; similarly henn is the feminine derivative from the
masculine hann ‘cock’; otherwise, different suffixes were used, as in the case of
hunta (m) ‘hunter’ and hunticge/huntigestre (f.). Therefore, they do not represent
any ambiguous instance of gender encoding in Old English.
Much more interesting is another subset of Old English nouns that appears with
inflectional morphology associated with two or three gender classes and includes
inanimates: for example, sæ ‘sea’ can be either feminine or masculine; sæl ‘time’, usu-
ally masculine, also occurs as feminine; hearg ‘temple’ is masculine as often as it is
feminine, and so on. In fact, such a fluctuation in gender assignment cannot possibly
be explained in terms of Corbett’s hierarchy or maxims and is not easily inserted
in Lehmann’s (1958) frame. Apparently no such pragmatic or semantic reasons as
those in § 2.1 can be called for, nor do their meanings differ in terms of the singula-
tive – collective – resultative perspective, although they mean differently.
In a very restricted group, the ‘connotations’ of gender appear to be brought to
the surface. Following Jakobson’s (1966) intuition,13 in some circumstances, the
factors which help determine the semantic rule, that is, the things which help us

F S
. Jakobson (1966: 236–7) is also more extreme, when he claims ‘everyday verbal mythology

PRO O
and poetry’ can be ‘potential circumstances’ in which semantic gender may appear meaningful

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establish a person’s sex, can be extended beyond their obvious domain and be
applied to nouns which would normally belong to what Corbett calls ‘semantic
residue’, i.e., biologically undistinguished. This could be the underlying mecha-
nism on the basis of which the Latin word vinea ‘vineyard-vine’ is glossed in the
Lindisfarne Gospel (see ex. 7) consistently with wingeard (f.) to express the idea of
vineyard and with wingeard (m.) to indicate vine. Here the feminine gender is a
meaning feature that denotes ‘X bearing Y’.14
(7) [Lxxi/13,15]
and ongann ðæm³ him on bispellum sprecca wingeard gesette mon
et coepit illis in parabolis loqui vineam pastinauit homo
and sende to lond-buendum on tid esne þte from þæm lond-buendum
et misit ad agricolas in tempore serrum ut from agricolis
onfenge of wæstm þære wingearde and gelahton hine ofslogon and
acciperit de fructu vineae et apprehendes eum occiderunt et
gewurpon buta ðæm wingeard hwæt ofðon doeð hlaferd ðære
eiecerunt extra uineam quid ergo faciet dominus
wingearde cymeð and fordoeð ða lond-buendo and dabit þ
uineae uenit et perdet colonos et dabit
winegeard oðrum
uineam aliis

In a few cases, concept associations cause the assignment of different genders to

the same noun: hæð occurs as feminine, masculine and neuter, probably in anal-
ogy to feld (m.) and gærs (n.) (see Fleischhacker 1889).
But cases such as wingeard and hæð are not the norm in this subset. With most
of those more-than-one-gender nouns, there is an alternation between neuter
and non-neuter gender, and if gender fluctuation has a meaning, it is not always
easily explicable in terms of extension of the semantic features prototypically
associated with feminine and masculine gender, nor with concept associations.
Nevertheless, there are behavioural consistencies: non-neuter gender is often
asso­ciated with (a) plurality, (b) specific interpretation, (c) individuatedness, and
(d) semantic roles.

in the residue gender. More specifically he accounts for the gender of Russian words for ‘fork’
and ‘knife’ to a Russian popular superstition according to which if a knife is dropped a male
guest will come, while if a fork is dropped a female guest can be expected. That’s why ‘knife’
in Russian is masculine and ‘fork’ is feminine. Of course these are post hoc explanations of an
­apparently arbitrary phenomenon.

. Slightly different, but connected, meaning is embodied by feminine gender in Italian word

F S
pairs, such as cassetto (m.) ‘drawer’ – cassetta (f.) ‘box’, cesto (m.) – cesta (f.) ‘corb’, where the femi-

PRO O
nine gender denotes a bigger size of an object (e.g., [+ big]), often more suitable as a container.

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3.1 Third type of gender deviance: [± countable]

The close relationship between number and gender is so undisputedly recog-
nized for gender to be the category most often realised together with number:
indeed Greenberg claims that agreement in gender implies number agreement
(1978: 94). Cross-linguistically, phenomena of syncretism are commonly observed,
where singular forms have more gender specifications than the plural. In a con-
vergent system there is only one form for the plural with no gender distinction
(cf. in German there are three genders in the singular, e.g., der Tisch – die Tasche
– das Buch vs. one in the plural, e.g., die Tische-Taschen-Bücher); in cross systems
the gender distinctions in the plural are also found in the singular (cf. in Tamil
the singular indicates masculine, feminine and neuter while the plural rational vs.
neuter, or in Qatar where the associative particle in the masculine form is used
also for feminine15 and masculine plurals, e.g., -ka).
Gender syncretism of this kind is proper to Old English too, but has nothing
to do with gender instability. In Old English there is an alternation between the
neuter gender in the singular (cf. 8a and 9a) and the masculine or feminine gender
in the plural (cf. 8b and 9b) within the paradigm of the same noun.
(8) a. [Bt.Met. Fox 26, 235] ðæt ingeþonc ælces monnes ðone lit [læt] ðider hit wile
“the mind of every man bands the body whither it will”
b. [Bt. 7.1; Fox 16, 5] Oþ ðæt he ongeat ðæs modes inngeþoncas
“until he understood the mind’s thoughts”
(9) a. [Chr. 1086] … Hy arerdon unrihte tollas
“They established unfair tributes”
b [Chart.Th. 635, 24] and Ælfric Hals nam þæt toll for ðæs kynges hand.
“and Ælfric Hals took the impost for the king’s hand”

More than one reason can be advanced to justify the shift from neuter to non-
neuter gender, the first being morphological transparency, since in many inflec-
tion paradigms plural neuter nouns are not distinguished from singular ones.
However, while it is certain that plurality is associated with non-neuter gender,
what can be pluralized can also be counted: In other words, the semantic feature
connected with non-neuter gender in these instances is [± countable].

3.2 Third type of gender deviance: [± specific] [± individuated]

In another subset of nouns, the alternation neuter vs. non-neuter seems to depend
on the interpretation of the referent: cwælm in (10a) is different from cwælm in

O F S
PRO
. In Qatar the associative particle in the feminine form is –ta.

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(10b) only in terms of specificity, that is, in (10a) it refers to the act through which
Abel was slaughtered, whereas in (10b) it refers to the event of dying.
(10) a. [Beo 107] þone cwealm gewræc ece drihten, þæs he Abel slog
“the eternal Lord punished the slaughter with which he murdered Abel”
b. [Prog. 1.2. (Foerst) 6] Gif on frigedæg geþunrað þonne getacnað
þæt nytena cwealm
“If on Friday it thunders, then it means death to the ignorant”

Such a contrast between a specific and a generic interpretation could also be the
reason why in Riddle (c) the neuter gender wiht is maintained in the choice of the
gender–specific pronoun (e.g., him) when it is generically mentioned, but is changed
when the ‘creature’ becomes more and more individuated (e.g., seo wiht and he).
Analogously, if the non-neuter gender is considered to be semantically connected
with the feature [+ individuated], the alternation neuter vs. non-neuter gender in
(12a) vs. (12b) becomes remarkably significant: in (12a) geniht is generically inter-
preted, whereas in (12b) it becomes specific thanks to its genitive modifier ðines
huses, and individuated as it is contrasted with the abundance of other houses.
(11) [Riddle (c)]
Ic ða wiht (n) geseah wæpnedcynnes.
Geoguðmyrðe grædig him on gafol forlet
Mon maþelade, se þe me gesægde:
Seo (f.) wiht, gif hio gedygeð duna briceð
gif he tobirsteð bindeð cwice
“then I saw a creature of masculine nature/with joy of youth greedy for itself as
a gift let/he said who spoke to me /The creature if survived breaks hills/if dies it
binds the living.”
(12) a. [Bt. 33.1] Wenst ðu ðæt se anweald and ðæt geniht seo to forseonne
“thinkest thou that power and abudance are to be despised?”
b. [Ps.Th. 35.8] Hy beoþ oferdrencte on ðære genihte ðines huses
inebriabuntur ab ubertate domus tuae

3.3 Third type of gender deviance: agent vs. patient

Neither past nor recent scientific literature has paid any attention to the possible
correspondence between gender assignment and semantic roles. Such complete
neglect could be due to the fact that this condition is often intertwined with or
can be interconnected with other factors. Even typologically, Corbett (1991: 33)
argues that there are no syntactic systems of gender assignment, that is, there is no
system where gender assignment only depends on syntactic rules. Nevertheless,

S
it has been noticed that several of the criteria which underlie gender systems also

O F
turn up regularly in other aspects of morphology and syntax, e.g., in ­ Tlapanec

T E D PRO
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  Letizia Vezzosi

where its semantic gender system has reflexes in its syntax, specifically in its
Word Order.
The case in point consists of those occurrences where the same word, although
denoting the same entity, shows different gender. In those instances no other rea-
son can be put forward to motivate the change but the semantic roles16 encoded
by the NP: in (13a–b) lyft denotes the same entity, but in (13a) it is neuter and in
(13b) it is feminine; the only difference between the two passages is that in (13a)
lyft is the object of the action and in (13b) it is the subject.
This preference for non-neuter gender for agent roles and for neuter gender for
patient roles could be one of the reasons why in (13c) cild is masculine, since in the
same text, i.e., Lindisfarne Gospel, it is regularly neuter if in the object position. Simi-
larly, in (13d) the formal rule, according to which the suffix –ung forms feminine
nouns, is rendered completely ineffective by the patient role played by geddung.
(13) a. [Hexam 6] He gesceop ðæt upplice lyft …
“the heavenly sky he created”
b. [Lchdom.iii.272.12] Ðeos lyft … is an ðæra feower gesceafta
“This sky is one of the several creations … ”
c. [L i/41,44] gefeade se cild (n.) in inna ire
exultauit infans in utero eius
d. [L xix /11] ðas ðæm geherendum to-geecde cuoeð þ geddung
haec illis audientibus adiciens dixit parabolam

In those occurrences, gender variation in the same lexeme apparently seems

to be unrelated to the above-mentioned semantic and pragmatic features, such as
[± countable], [± individuated]. On the other hand, semantic roles are linked to
other pragmatic features: topicality and animacy, first of all, for agents are proto-
typically human or animate and topical, but also individuality, agents being generally
high in the individuality scale (cf. Givón 1984: 139 or Sasse 1993: 659). Consequent-
ly, semantic roles also present the pertinent semantic and pragmatic traits already
investigated in the other instances of gender deviance, i.e., [± human] [± animate]
[± countable] [± specific] [± individuated], which are in turn specific manifesta-
tions of the more general principles of ‘individualisation’ (Seiler 1986: 25).

. A similar phenomenon was noticed by Lazzeroni (2002) in Old Greek, in Sanskrit and in
Hittite, where words with the same referent but different gender had a complementary distribu-
tion in the sentence, that is, masculine gender to encode the ‘actor’ and neuter the ‘undergoer’:
Sanskr. svar (n.) and sūrah ‘sun’, Sanskr. udaka-,udan-,vār-(n.) and ap-(f.) ‘water’; OGreek ὄυаρ
(n.) and ὄυєιοϚ (m.) ‘dream’; in Hittite watar ‘water’ is masculine when it purifies, but neuter

F S
when is given. Already according to Meillet (1921: 129 ff.) the masculine form of ‘dream’ repre-

PRO O
sented the dream as active force, where the neuter as an event.

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In other words, Old English gender incoherence is not chaotic, but depends
on the primary conceptual parameter of individualisation or ‘divisibility’ (Vogel
2000), which secondary features underlie (Weber 2000):
[+ countable] [– countable]
[+ individualized] [– individualized]
[+ external perspective] [– external perspective]
[– additive] [+ additive]
[– divisible] [+ divisible]

All the traits on the left column speak for a higher degree of individualisation and
consequently favour the non-neuter gender assignment. On the contrary, every
feature in the right column characterises lower degree of individualisation and
often corresponds to neuter nominal gender.

4. Conclusion

Nearly all historical discussions of English classification suggest that English gen-
der evolved from a grammatical to a natural system. Such a shift is generally ex-
plained as the direct result of the decay of noun and modifier inflectional endings
in the late Old English and early Middle English (Mustanoja 1960). Along this line
gender inconsistency is considered to be connected with the decadence17 of the
Old English nominal system:18 developments such as “the dissolution of inflec-
tional classes, the dissociation of the categories of case and number and the grad-
ual generalization of word-based noun morphology” (Kastovsky 2000: 709–10)
affected the rules on which the Old English formal system was based.
Accordingly, gender variability simply signals “the disintegration of the cat-
egory as such and consequently of the gradual loss of any sensitivity for gram-
matical gender” (Kastovsky 2000: 722). However, it has been attested in all types
of texts, irrespective of text genres and chronology: it is not rare to come upon
gender deviance even in Beowulf (see 14). Therefore, we agree with Kastovsky
(2000: 709–10) when he argues that “the decay of [grammatical] gender is not just

. The analyses of Fleischhacker (1889) and Wełna (1978) also concord with this view: bor-
rowings or loanwords are not internalised into the target language morphology and prestigious
foreign languages could be very influential, as well as concept associations and morphological
levelling were possible, because of the weakness and opacity of the Old English nominal system.

. Mitchell (1985: § 62–65) provides three explanations for these mixtures of forms: errors

F S
from ignorance of a ‘dying system’; analogical confusion confined to a particular context; varia-

PRO O
tion (or confusion) of gender and class in Germanic and in Old English.

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a phenomenon of the late Old English and early Middle English periods.” ­Already
in Beowulf one can find instances of semantic gender agreement overriding for-
mal gender agreement: in (14) hlæw ‘mound’ is grammatically feminine, but its
referent is inanimate; accordingly the anaphoric pronoun is hit, namely the ac-
cusative neuter form, and not the expected accusative feminine hie which would
agree with the gender of its antecedent.
(14) [Beowulf 2802–2807]
Hatað heaðomære hlæw gewyrcean
…
þæt hit sæliðend   syððan hatan
Biowulfes biorh
“Bid the warriors to build a mound … that afterwards sailors call it the barrow
of Beowulf ”

Nor is help provided by standard grammars of Old English, in which gender

confusion is related to inflectional confusion or is at most taken into consideration
only in connection with natural agreement overruling grammatical agreement
(Mitchell 1985 § 69). Even in this case, it continues to be common practice to
attribute gender variation found in the manuscripts to ‘scribal error’, and, indeed,
scribes certainly made plenty of mistakes in copying. Nevertheless, when confront-
ing unexpected forms, from a heuristic point of view, it would be, in my opinion,
preferable to invoke scribal error only when the evidence clearly supports such a
hypothesis. On the other hand, the regularity and consistency of variant gender
forms require investigation in themselves.
Undoubtedly this phenomenon must be related to a general progressive change
in Old English morphology through which “the functional load of grammatical
gender markers diminishe[d]” (Braunmüller 2000: 49). Conversely, gender mark-
ing was not lost, but, thanks to its diminishing grammatical function, it could be
“used for other purposes […] reinterpreted as a semantic feature in order to ex-
press other grammatical categories or functions” (Wurzel 1986: 94). Old English
gender deviations might be a remnant of the original Indo-European categorial
meanings of the three gender opposition (Lehmann 1958): masculine encoded
countability, feminine expressed collectiveness without distributive character, and
neuter represented uncountable mass nouns. In other words, Indo-European gen-
der marking encoded the concept of [individuality].19 But it is undoubted that Old
English already had such a well-developed formal system of gender assignment

. In Indo-European languages (cf. Serzisko 1982: 99–103) the concept of gender is based on

F S
a quantitative opposition, i.e., definite vs. indefinite, which corresponds to the opposition mascu-

PRO O
line vs. feminine/neuter since the feature [+ individuated] includes the feature [+ definite].

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that this one was about to decline. More convincingly one could then suppose that
a new gender category apparently acquired a new function, that is, difference in
gender corresponded to difference in the perspectivisation of nouns: gender varia-
tion underlies the primary conceptual parameter of ‘individuality’.
The pervasiveness and the consistency of the phenomenon raises the question
whether this perspectivisation function might be simply interpreted as the out-
come of a re-interpretation process of gender due to the decay of the Old English
formal system, or whether it is deeply rooted in the grammatical category of gen-
der. This chapter cannot provide a definitive answer, but a preliminary and tenta-
tive hypothesis can nevertheless be attempted.
Present Day English represents a language with a strict semantic gender system.
However, there are cases where the straightforward semantic rules are overridden
by emotive and affective factors (Vachek 1964), and especially in colloquial usage,
considerable variation is possible: humans may be downgraded by the use of it,20
and inanimates upgraded by the use of he or she, only if they are countable and indi-
viduated (cf. 15a–b). In English varieties and dialects gender variation is common,
and there is general agreement that the determining feature underlying such fluc-
tuation is the individuality parameter (Siemund 2001; Kortmann & Scheider 2004):
feminine and masculine pronouns21 are also used with inanimates if ­characterised
by the feature [+ individuated], but never with mass noun (cf. 16a).
a. Is he washable? [thus an American female customer at a store refers to a
(15)
bedspread (Corbett 1991: 12)]
b. You said the black knife, you said. I said the sharp one this one he’s fairly
cheap but they use him a lot [BNC KD0]
(16)
a. how did they do that [sc. Baking] again? Well, y-you see, you and-,
had – ’twas hearth fires then, th., th-, right down on the hearth, you see, and
they had a big round iron with a handle on ‘n, and they used to put he under
the fire and he’d get hot; then they used to put some – take some fire from the
corner o’the fireplace like and put it here where you was going to bake to, and
put this iron on top of it [South West England (Wakelin 1986: 103–4)]
b. they heard the sneck o the door liftin, and the door tried but sho would no
open [Orkney speaker (Wales 1996: 138)]

. Mathiot and Roberts (1979) give examples from American English in which humans are
downgraded by the use of it: e.g., the burglar broke into the house. It destroyed our furniture while
stealing.

F S
. Hockett calls the animate gender ‘absorptive’, by which he means that ‘there are routes for a

PRO O
shift of gender from inanimate to animate, but not the opposite’ (1966: 62).

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North Germanic languages, such as Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, have a

two-gender system, i.e., uter gender – historically derived from the syncretism of
Old Germanic feminine and masculine – vs. neuter gender. Their distribution
is formally ruled. However, they can alternate in special circumstances, as is clear
in (17).

(17) a. Är färsk sill gott? [Swedish]

is fresh herring [uter] good [neuter]?
“is fresh herring good?”
b. Nyfångad sill är    särskilt god [Swedish]
new-caught herring [uter] is specially good [uter]
“the herring, recently caught, is good in a special way”

Here, as in Present Day English varieties and dialects, the difference in gen-
der ­ appears to correspond to a difference in perspectivisation. If a noun is
[+ individuated], then uter agreement is favoured. This also holds true in other
Germanic languages, such as Dutch: if ‘toothpaste’, which grammatically is of
common ­gender, is conceptualised as mass noun, the specific-gender pronoun is
neuter, but when ‘toothpaste’ is individuated it becomes of common gender (18).

(18) a. Is de tandpasta    op? ja, het     is op. [Dutch]

is the.common toothpaste up? yes, Pron-Neut. is up
“Is toothpaste finished’ Yes, it is”
b. Is de tube    tandpasta  leeg?    Ja,  hij (common)   is leeg [Dutch]
Is the.common toothpaste empty? Yes, Pron.Common is empty
“Is the toothpaste tube finished’ Yes, it is”

To conclude, gender is traditionally described as a sort of ‘secondary grammatical

category’ of the noun (Ibrahim 1973: 26), because unlike other grammatical cat-
egories it allows no choice and has no ‘authentic relation’ to conceptual categories.
Thus gender is given a special status. From the analysis of Old English data and
comparison with Germanic and cross-linguistic data, it clearly appears that gender
is either primarily or secondarily linked to some semantic or pragmatic factors,
in any gender assignment systems. Accordingly, if one thinks gender essentially
underlies the concept of [± individuality], then its function is no longer reduced
to agreement, but becomes a meaningful feature of the noun: among the nomi-
nal grammatical categories, the function of gender can be categorised as ‘nominal
­aspect’ or ‘perspectivisation’ of the noun.
Consequently, in periods such as Old English, gender deviance in no way sig-
nals the disintegration of the category, but represents a special circumstance in

F
which the basic function of gender marking becomes more visible, thanks to a

O S
PRO
weakening of the formal nominal inflectional system.

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