Gender and Analogical Extension: From Animacy to Borrowings in Polish Zuzanna Fuchs

1. Gender and Analogical Extension: From Animacy to Borrowings in Polish Zuzanna Fuchs Harvard University Slavic Linguistics Society Annual Conference Szczecin 2013

2. Goal: To analyze the adaptation of English loanwords (specifically nouns) in modern Polish

3. Research Question Because of new political circumstances in the last two decades, modern Polish has a large number of loanwords from English. What grammatical strategies does Polish deploy to integrate new English loanwords?

4. Outline • Introduction: • Research question • Background information • Study 1: English loanwords are consistently declined using the animate accusative • Experimental design and results • Analysis • Study 2: What happens with new (nonce) words? • Experimental design and results • Analysis

5. Background information Grammatical gender in Polish: Most common endings (but not limited to these!) feminine: -a neuter: -o masculine: most others

6. Background information Polish case system • 3 genders • 7 cases • Masculine gender split on animacy

7. Background information But it's not so simple... Growing category of nouns that despite semantic inanimacy still take animate accusative marker

8. Study 1 Goal: to analyze what (1) gender and (2) declension paradigms are assigned to English loanwords

9. Study 1: Experimental Design • Previous hypothesis: Baran, 2003: “Interspeaker variation in loanword gender assignment results from tension between (i) the gender of the Polish equivalent or nearequivalent and (ii) the phonological shape of the word, i.e. what genders are allowed by Polish morphophonotactics” Can we find evidence for both parts of this hypothesis?

10. Study 1: Experimental Design Fill-in-the-blank grammaticality judgments: Nie zostawiłeś ____________. You didn't leave [any message]. a) żadnego message (mas.gen., uninflected) b) żadnego message'u (masc.gen., inflected) c) żadnej message (fem.gen., uninflected) d) żadnej message'y (fem.gen., inflected) e) inne________ Two free response questions

11. Study 1: Experimental Design • Methodology based on Baran, 2003 • Differences: • Sample size (45 native speakers of Polish) • Requirement for length of time living in Poland • Requirement for frequency of speaking Polish

12. Study 1: Results

13. Study 1: Discussion NEUTER • Very few English words end in -o, but some Spanish nouns common in English are adopted: E. nacho, burrito • Reanalyzed as masculine: E. nacho → Pol. nachos plural nachosy E. burrito → Pol. burritos plural burritosy

14. Study 1: Discussion FEMININE • If English word ends in [a], always assigned feminine gender – few of these in English • If English word doesn't end in [a], assigned masculine gender by a majority • Maximum disagreeing speakers = 2 (4.4%) • Disagreeing speakers different across the board

15. Study 1: Discussion FEMININE • Only exception: photo / foto Analyzed as feminine “ta phota” may not even be a loanword; likely from foto:fotografia :: photo:photograph

16. Study 1: Discussion • Baran, 2003: “Interspeaker variation in loanword gender assignment results from tension between (i) the gender of the Polish equivalent or nearequivalent and (ii) the phonological shape of the word, i.e. what genders are allowed by Polish morphophonotactics” • No support for part (i) in the data • Voicemail (poczta głosowa), message (wiadomość), party (impreza), etc.

17. Study 1: Discussion Masculine is default

18. Study 1: Discussion • Words that have been part of the vocabulary for a while and some that have been adapted already (ex. sms), almost always declined, and in the animate accusative case • Other words (ex. cell phone) speakers split 50-50

19. Study 1: Analysis A tradition of interpreting this accusative as a partitive genitive for “many semantically inanimate nouns […], particularly, drinks, vehicles, currencies, dances, tobacco and technology products” Sadowska 2012: 128

20. Study 1: Analysis • Partitive semantics plausible for categories of food, beverage, and tobacco products • Less plausible for cars technology products pić szampana – to drink champagne [drink] jeść pomidora – to eat a tomato [food] kupić iPoda – to buy an iPod mieć Fiata – to have a Fiat

21. Study 1: Analysis • Sadowska (2012) also overlooks several categories of lexical items assigned the animate accusative newspaper titles, furniture, common daily items, etc. Czytam Newsweeka. “I read Newsweek.” Kup sixpacka. “Buy a sixpack.” Potrzebujemy mopa. “We need a mop.”

22. Study 1: Analysis • Partitive semantics cannot account for the case on these loanwords (see Berndt, 2003 for further arguments against partitive semantics) English words are given the animate accusative marker, regardless of semantic animacy!

23. Study 1: Analysis How did we get there? Analogical extension

24. Study 1: Analysis • What drives this analogy? A few possible answers: • Partitive genitive? • Sociolinguistic effect? • Frequency effect? • “any masculine noun with genitive singular in a is a potential member [of category of inanimate nouns with animate accusative case]” Rothstein, 1993:697

25. Study 1: Analysis “Brand names … easily undergo facultative animization [...] comprise a virtually distinct morphological class.” Swan (1988) Założyłemadidasa. 'I put on a tennis shoe [lit. an Adidas].' Dziecko ma na sobiepampersa. 'The child is wearing a diaper [lit. a Pampers].'

26. Study 1: Analysis Common nouns, then vs now: Mam komputer. “I have a computer.” Mam laptopa. “... a laptop.” Mam telefon. “... a telephone.” Mam cell phona. “... a cell phone.” Mam smartphona. “... a smart phone.”

27. Study 1: Analysis Are there exceptions? Of course. Initial hypothesis phonologically conditioned: Wczoraj miałam interview. “Yesterday I had an interview.” background, meeting, PlayStation (to be continued...)

28. Study 1: Conclusion The animate accusative is now regularly applied to English borrowings, although this is a change in how English borrowings have historically been treated.

29. Study 2 What happens with new (nonce) words?

30. Study 2: Goal and Hypothesis • Goal: to determine how Polish speakers treat previously unknown English loans that are not established in colloquial Polish speech • Hypothesis: • “Real” English loanwords will be declined (except those whose phonological shape is similar to that of previously noted exceptions) • Nonce words whose shape allows for declension will be declined if they are perceived as English words

31. Study 2: Experimental Design • Slightly different question format: Mógłbyś po drodze na imprezę kupić ______ ? a) sixpack b) sixpacka c) sixpackę

32. Study 2: Experimental Design • Very simple instructions • 15 items: 8 “real” words and 7 nonce words • (Kelly 2004) • Selected in two groups: those similar to previously established exceptions, and those that are not • Random sample of speakers used in previous study, similar requirements

33. Study 2: Results • 13 of the 15 items were declined and given the animate accusative by the majority • Exception 1: Playstation, which we already know to be an exception • Exception 2: corlax, which was declined about 50-50 • All nonce words were declined!

34. Study 2: Results

35. Study 2: Results • Recall previous phonological exceptions: PlayStation vs dolation interview vs belview

36. Study 2: Analysis • These have no previous established use in colloquial Polish and are unknown, and yet they were declined • English loanword doesn't have to go through a process of assimilation into Polish to be declined anymore

37. Study 2: Conclusions • Confirmation of gender assignment and animate accusative results from before • The fact that nonce words are declined and assigned animate accusative confirms that English loanwords are a new subcategorywithin the Polish language • Subcategory:recent English (noun) loanwords

38. Conclusion

39. Conclusions • Masculine gender is the default • Animate accusative has come to be assigned to almost all English loanwords through a process of analogical extension • English loanwords no longer need to go through a process of assimilation to be declined, they are a subcategory of the language that works in a particular way

40. Further Questions What about the plural cases that are split on animacy? What happens with loanwords from other languages?

41. Citations • Baran, Dominika. 2003. English Loanwords in Polish and the Question of Gender Assignment. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 8.1: 15 -27. • Berndt, Sergei. 2003. O kategoriach żywotności w języku polskim.In Adrian Fiedler (ed.), Proceedings of Spotkanie Młodych Polonist: zbi prac wygłoszonych na pierwszej konferencji niemiecko-polskiej student polonistyki w Opolu, 37 -46. Potsdam University Press: Potsdam University. • Comrie, Bernard. 1989. Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Oxford: University of Chicago Press. • Rothstein, Robert A. 1993. Edited by Comrie, Bernard and Corbett, Greville G. The Slavonic Languages. Routledge: London. • Sadowska, Iwona. 2012. Polish: A Comprehensive Grammar. New York: Routledge. • Swan, Oscar E. January 1988. Facultative Animacy in Polish: A Study in Grammatical Gender Formation. The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies.

42. Thank you