Gender system in Jowsheqani Dialect

Subject Areas : ...

vali rezaei ¹ , seyyed ghiasoddin razavian ²

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Received: 2016-05-24 Accepted : 2016-11-02 Published : 2017-02-19

Keywords: Typology, feminine, Jowsheqani dialect, grammatical gender, masculine,

Abstract :

This paper examines the gender system in Jowsheqani dialect, a member of the central Iranian dialects. After defining gender and reviewing literature and some theoretical considerations, we analyzed the data gathered from the local illiterate or low educated speakers within the framework of Corbett (1991, 2007).We have demonstrated that the gender system in this dialect includes a binary distinctions masculine and feminine. The morphological coding expressing gender includes suffixes "–a" and "–e" for masculine and feminine respectively. The coding of gender is restricted to third person singular nouns. First and second person singular as well as plural nouns do not manifest gender in this dialect. Gender distinction is not specific to animate nouns but inanimate nouns also have gender coding. Furthermore we have shown that gender assignment is basically semantic although phonological assignment somehow plays a role in this regard. From the typological point of view, this dialect has a convergent gender system. Neutral gender does not exist in this dialect. The gender system of this dialect confirms almost all Greenbergian implicational universals concerning gender system in the languages in the world.

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