Spanish nouns are classified as either feminine or masculine. Although some nouns vary depending on their denotation (such as niño ‘male child’ vs. niña ‘female child’), in most cases a fixed gender is assigned. When lacking an inflectional cue, nouns could variably admit both genders. While alternating gender may be present in standard Spanish (e.g., azúcar moreno ‘brown.m sugar’ vs. azúcar blanquilla ‘white.f sugar’), it predominantly depends on social or geographical factors (e.g., la vinagre ‘the.f vinegar’, el sal ‘the.m salt’ unlike standard el vinagre ‘the.m vinegar’, la sal ‘the.f salt’). Thus, Spanish binary system represents a fork in the road of gender assignment to nouns. Focused on European Spanish, the present study addresses the sociogeographical influences conditioning gender values in Spanish nouns. To the best of my knowledge, no previous research has been systematically conducted on gender assignment in modern Spanish dialects, so my findings shall shed light on how gender values are determined and diffused across rural and urban varieties. Data are retrieved mainly from the Corpus Oral y Sonoro del Español Rural and the Proyecto para el estudio sociolingüístico del español de España y América), as well as other bibliographical and dialectal sources.
Abstract This article examines the usage patterns and declining process of possessive suffixes in Finnic languages. Possessive suffixes are pronoun originated grammatical markers that have cognates in all branches of Uralic language. Alongside their main function as adnominal possessive markers, they are known to have a range of other meanings and functions, such as emphasizing the referent of a personal pronoun. The role of possessive suffixes has also been significant in the development of reflexive and possessive-reflexive pronominal constructions. Even in languages where no longer in use, possessive suffixes have left their mark on these constructions. In Finnic languages, the use of possessive suffixes has either ceased or it is on decline, though the details of the declining process display variation across the languages. Several stages of decline can be observed, and they are accessed by comparing the same or similar text material, as well as grammatical descriptions of Finnic languages.
AbstractThe article analyzes the phonetics of Bukhara Oghuz dialects and their relationship to other Uzbek Oghuz dialects and the Turkmen language and its dialects. The use of the phoneme 3(e)in the first, second and third syllables of words in Bukhara Oghuz dialects is more common than in Khorezm, Toshovuz, Karakalpak Oghuz dialects. Thus, while noting similarities and peculiarities of Bukhara Oghuz dialects with other Uzbek Oghuz dialects and Turkmen language and dialects, it is necessary to emphasize the following.
This study presents the diversity of North African Judeo-Arabic dialects documented in an extensive course of fieldwork concerning some one hundred and thirty Moroccan Jewish dialects, both urban and rural. Dozens of additional dialects from Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria complete the global repartitioning of these dialects into four distinct groups:Eqa:l,Wqal,kjal, andʔaldialects. The different dialects in each set share common phonetic, phonological, morphological, and grammatical features. All of them preserve the unvoiced realization of the stop /q/ and articulate it as a uvular [q] (Eqa:landWqal), a palato-velar [kj] (kjal), or a glottal [ʔ] (ʔal).Eqa:ldialects developed in Libya, Tunisia, and Eastern Algeria; they distinguish between long and short vowels.Wqaldialects developed in Western Morocco.Kjaldialects developed in northwestern Algeria and in southeastern Morocco.ʔaldialects developed in Moroccan cities, where Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal settled among native Jews.
Abstract On the basis of these and other syntactic facts, he claims that in French, subject pronouns are phonological clitics: in the syntax they occur in subject position and are therefore in complementary distribution with lexical subjects (cf. (2b,c)); when lexical and pronominal subjects apparently co-occur, as in (2a), the lexical subject is in reality left dislocated, and only the pronoun occupies the subject position. Thus, in the case of DPs that cannot be left dislocated (e.g., some negative quantifiers), the co-occurrence of lexical and pronominal subject is barred (cf. (2d,e)). Furthermore, Rizzi claims that in the Northern Italian dialects considered here, the subject pronouns are syntactic clitics: they are generated as part of Inflection and can freely co-occur with a lexical subject in subject position (cf. (1 a,d)); as part of the verbal inflection, their expression is obligatory (lb,e), but they represent a strong agreement type, so the subject position may remain unfilled (lc).