I argue that grammatical gender is semantically empty but intrinsically valued, so the strict linkage between uninterpretable and unvalued in Chomsky (2001) cannot be correct. I then demonstrate that gender is infinitely reusable as an “ activity” feature; in contrast, abstract Case activates a DP for just one Agree relation. This asymmetry suggests that valuation via Agree causes goal deactivation, and that deactivation is not necessary for every uninterpretable feature (uF). I accordingly analyze deactivation as arising from PF illegibility of multiple values for a single feature. Agree relations value Case, but never value nominal gender, so the legibility problem does not arise. I demonstrate that in Bantu, adjunction of N to D makes gender accessible to all probes outside DP. This and the reusability of gender as an activity feature leads to a cluster of systematic contrasts between Bantu and Indo-European languages: Bantu DPs A-move much more freely than Indo-European DPs, and value iterating
subject agreement. The facts thus demonstrate that the internal syntax of DP impacts its feature matrix; it is not the case that a DP automatically inherits all f-features of its subparts, as syntactic theory generally assumes. Finally, I illustrate that Bantu C and T can agree with different expressions, casting doubt on the Feature Inheritance approach to uF in Chomsky (2007, 2008) and Richards (2007). The facts of grammatical gender argue that valued uF Transfer to the Conceptual-Intentional Interface without inducing crashes.
2022. No case tampering once transfer domain is formed!. The Linguistic Review 39:2 ► pp. 203 ff.
Jurczyk, Rafał
2017. The Loss of Grammatical Gender and Case Features Between Old and Early Middle English: Its Impact on Simple Demonstratives and Topic Shift. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 52:2 ► pp. 203 ff.
Keine, Stefan
2018. Case vs. positions in the locality of A-movement. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 3:1
Kirova, Alena & José Camacho
2021. Failed gender agreement in L1 English L2 Spanish: Syntactic or lexical problem?. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 6:1
Kouneli, Maria
2021. Number-based noun classification. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 39:4 ► pp. 1195 ff.
Kramer, Ruth
2016. The location of gender features in the syntax. Language and Linguistics Compass 10:11 ► pp. 661 ff.
Kramer, Ruth
2020. Grammatical Gender: A Close Look at Gender Assignment Across Languages. Annual Review of Linguistics 6:1 ► pp. 45 ff.
2024. Re-analyzing ‘say’ complementation: Implications for case theory and beyond. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory
MEISEL, JÜRGEN M.
2018. Early child second language acquisition: French gender in German children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 21:4 ► pp. 656 ff.
Pietraszko, Asia
2021. The coming apart of case and focus in Bantu. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 39:2 ► pp. 579 ff.
Prentza, Alexandra, Maria Kaltsa, Dionysios Tafiadis & Ianthi Maria Tsimpli
2023. Standardization of the Gender Assignment and Agreement Assessment in the Greek Language: Preliminary Evidence from Bilingual Greek—Albanian School Age Children. Languages 8:2 ► pp. 136 ff.
SHIMOKARIYA, SHO
2017. ON THE NATURE OF ENGLISH GERUNDS. ENGLISH LINGUISTICS 33:2 ► pp. 415 ff.
Simango, Silvester Ron
2012. Subject marking, coordination and noun classes in ciNsenga. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 30:2 ► pp. 171 ff.
Walter, Daniel R.
2023. Boundary Crossing from the Start: 55 Years of Second Language Grammatical Gender Research in Review. In Crossing Boundaries in Researching, Understanding, and Improving Language Education [Educational Linguistics, 58], ► pp. 57 ff.
[no author supplied]
2014. List of tables. In The History of Low German Negation, ► pp. ix ff.
[no author supplied]
2014. List of figures. In The History of Low German Negation, ► pp. xii ff.
[no author supplied]
2014. Series preface. In The History of Low German Negation, ► pp. vii ff.
[no author supplied]
2014. Copyright Page. In The History of Low German Negation, ► pp. iv ff.
[no author supplied]
2014. Preface. In The History of Low German Negation, ► pp. viii ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 11 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.