Individuation and agreement: Grammatical gender resolution in Icelandic

Agreement with conjoined noun phrases is an interesting topic of research for languages that have a gender distinction in the plural. The central aim of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive account of agreement with conjoined noun phrases in one such language: Icelandic. It is generally assumed that there are two agreement options with conjoined noun phrases in languages: resolution and agreement with one conjunct. The focus in this thesis is on the availability of these options in Icelandic, and whether the distribution of resolution is affected by two typological hierarchies: The Individuation Hierarchy and the Agreement Hierarchy. Another principal aim is to establish whether the gender resolution rules that have been described for the language are always used by speakers and to what extent agreement with one conjunct is used. An agreement form elicitation survey was constructed to gain insight into these issues. It was completed by 405 native speakers of Icelandic. The...Show moreAgreement with conjoined noun phrases is an interesting topic of research for languages that have a gender distinction in the plural. The central aim of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive account of agreement with conjoined noun phrases in one such language: Icelandic. It is generally assumed that there are two agreement options with conjoined noun phrases in languages: resolution and agreement with one conjunct. The focus in this thesis is on the availability of these options in Icelandic, and whether the distribution of resolution is affected by two typological hierarchies: The Individuation Hierarchy and the Agreement Hierarchy. Another principal aim is to establish whether the gender resolution rules that have been described for the language are always used by speakers and to what extent agreement with one conjunct is used. An agreement form elicitation survey was constructed to gain insight into these issues. It was completed by 405 native speakers of Icelandic. The results of this survey indicate that the distribution of resolution in Icelandic is indeed affected by the Individuation Hierarchy, while it does not adhere to the prediction made by the Agreement Hierarchy. This is argued to be due to interaction effects of the two hierarchies and the approach of the present study. Gender resolution rules are followed by speakers in most cases. However, speakers use neuter agreement in resolution where it was not anticipated. The same applies to singular agreement: when agreement with one conjunct was expected, the neuter singular is widely used instead. Two gender defaults are argued to account for these patterns: a normal case default in resolution and an exceptional case default in singular agreement.Show less

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Individuation and agreement: Grammatical gender resolution in Icelandic