Gender variation and gender markedness in Russian nouns

Voprosy Jazykoznanija. 2023. Vol. 2. P. 7–28.

Varvara Magomedova, Natalia Slioussar

In this paper, we analyze different factors affecting gender assignment in Russian nouns. We conducted two studies combining experimental, dictionary, and corpus data (relying both on traditional corpora and on the web-as-a-corpus approach). The first study is dedicated to gender assignment to expressive nouns in a situation when the gender of the base noun and the expressive suffix give contradictory cues. We demonstrated extensive gender variation in these cases and estimated the role of different factors affecting it. The gender of the base noun and the inflection associated with the expressive suffix appeared to be most important. Animacy is also relevant (certain options are possible only for nouns denoting people), but statistically insignificant.

The second study is on gender assignment to nouns that have a zero inflection in nominative singular and a palatalized or alveolo-palatal stem-final consonant. In the previous studies, it was noted that the phonological properties of this consonant affect the gender distribution in these nouns. Our data confirmed this generalization and provided several new insights. We also demonstrated that native Russian speakers are sensitive to it. We discuss the implications of our results for different approaches in theoretical morphology and focus on gender markedness analyzing a special status of masculine gender.

Keywords: linguistic

Publication based on the results of: Languages of Russia: morphosyntax and its interaction with other modules (2022)