36.2703, Books: The Dynamics of Feminisation: Verelst (2025)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-2703. Thu Sep 11 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.2703, Books: The Dynamics of Feminisation: Verelst (2025)

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Date: 10-Sep-2025
From: Sebastian Nordhoff [support at langsci-press.org]
Subject: The Dynamics of Feminisation: Verelst (2025)


Title: The dynamics of feminisation
Subtitle: A corpus-based diachronic analysis of Dutch and German
feminising morphology
Series Title: Open Germanic Linguistics
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Language Science Press
           http://langsci-press.org
Book URL: https://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/502

Author(s): Natalie Verelst

eBook

Abstract:

In this book, feminisation – the marking of female sex on personal
nouns – in Dutch and German is investigated contrastively,
diachronically, and corpus-linguistically. The corpus-based approach
entails a theoretical and methodological shift from a structuralist
and essentialist approach to the interplay of language and sex to a
poststructuralist, usage-based and holistic perspective, which has
long been lacking from the scientific domain of Gender Linguistics.
Starting from the observation that feminising morphology seems less
frequently used in Dutch than in German in the same contexts, the goal
is to examine how intra- and extralinguistic factors influence the
choice for or against the use of these morphological patterns. These
(only partly consciously made) choices are called differentiation and
neutralisation, respectively. On the intralinguistic level, the link
between the use of feminising morphology and properties of the
grammatical gender system is investigated contrastively and
diachronically, as well as more generally various semantic and
pragmatic factors (semantics of the personal noun, animacy,
referentiality) that may contribute to a more or less stable
feminisation system. On the extralinguistic level, the effect of
diverging views on gender-fair language use in both language areas,
and within the respective areas (North vs. South for Dutch, East vs.
West for German), stands out.
Drawing on diachronic corpus data, the effects of these factors are
investigated empirically in three case studies by focusing on the form
(Case Study I) and function (Case Study II: feminisation in human
reference and Case Study III: feminisation in nonhuman reference) of
feminising morphology. Both formally and functionally, Dutch
feminisation is a complex system, whereas the German one is more
uniform and straightforward. The use of feminising morphology in Dutch
has been restricted since at least the second half of the 20th
century, but less so in Northern than in Southern (Belgian) Dutch. By
contrast, the tendency in German goes toward the consolidation of the
feminisation system in all semantically female contexts, with the
exception of language use in former East-German newspapers.
Furthermore, as opposed to the Dutch feminisation system, the German
system has taken on inflectional properties known as inherent
inflection, the marking of which is semantically motivated. Examples
of the use of feminising morphology in nonhuman reference fit in this
analysis as well (e.g., die Partei als Gewinnerin ‘the party as the
winner.fem’).
Significant impacting factors in the reduction of a feminisation
system are indeed the gender system (feminisation is connected with a
preserved masculine/feminine gender distinction, present in German but
not in Dutch), referentiality (feminisation is an important
referent-tracking instrument and therefore more likely found in
referential contexts), semantics (in the case of reduction of
feminisation, remnants of the system are observed in semantic contexts
which foreground social gender), the newness of a personal noun in a
language (neutralisation of new nouns is more common than
neutralisation of long-established nouns), and the influence of
language policy: the Dutch feminisation system, as well as the use of
feminising morphology in the former GDR, has been subject to a
significant effect of conscious neutralisation strategies as a means
of gender-fair language use.

Linguistic Field(s): Morphology

Subject Language(s): Dutch (nld)
                     German (deu)

Language Family(ies): Germanic

Written In: English (eng)



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