On the relation between gender and declension

Abstract

This paper examines the relation between gender and declension in Norwegian. Traditionally, one has assumed that genders are the basis for predicting declensions in that language. More recently, it has been suggested that declensions are the basis for predicting genders — in all languages that have both. Diachronic data examined in this paper indicate that the relation between gender and declension is complex: For most Norwegian nouns, declension is predicted on the basis of gender. For a few nouns, viz. those in which the plural is more token-frequent than the singular, declension is the basis on which gender is predicted. The paper also illustrates the relevance of frequency, local markedness, ‘morphology by itself’ and the principle of contrast.