Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

Gender assignment in Old English 101
(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 interpreted,
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
. 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,
it has been noticed that several of the criteria which underlie gender systems also
turn up regularly in other aspects of morphology and syntax, e.g., in Tlapanec