Jamtlandic and Elfdalian are two conservative Scandinavian language varieties spoken in rural Sweden. While Elfdalian has been recognized as a language by SIL International, Jamtlandic is considered a dialect of Swedish. Despite pressure from Standard Swedish, which has two genders, Jamtlandic and Elfdalian have maintained the three-gender system (masculine, feminine, and neuter) that was present in Old Norse and Old Swedish. Current research indicates that the three-gender system is breaking down in Jamtlandic (Van Epps & Carling 2017). However, a high degree of community support for Elfdalian (such as preschool education and some literature in the Elfdalian language) may contribute to the preservation of its gender system.
In this paper, I investigate the variation in gender assignment between standard and nonstandard language varieties. Old Norse and Old Swedish are included to explore how gender assignment has changed over time. The material for this study consists of 1000 cognate sets with word forms and gender for Old Norse, Old Swedish, Elfdalian, Jamtlandic, Standard Swedish, and Norwegian Nynorsk (a three-gender language). To determine variation in gender assignment, percentages of change are calculated for each pair of languages. Preliminary results show that Elfdalian is the most conservative, with 8% change from Old Swedish, and 12.3% change from Old Norse. In Jamtlandic, gender assignment has changed 10.6% from Old Swedish and 17.6% from Old Norse. In Jamtlandic and Elfdalian, feminine is the least stable gender, supporting the trend of weakening of feminine gender under pressure from Standard Swedish (Van Epps & Carling 2017, Rabb 2007, Thelander 1975). Nynorsk, an official language of Norway, does not show weakening of feminine gender.
This is the first study on gender assignment in nonstandard Scandinavian language varieties. It contributes to our understanding of the factors that influence changes in gender assignment.
References
Rabb, V. (2007). Genuskongruens på reträtt : variation i nominalfrasen i Kvevlaxdialekten. Åbo: Åbo Akademis förlag.
Thelander, M. (1975). Grammatiskt genus i en nutida norrländsk talgemenskap. Uppsala, 1975.
Van Epps, B., & Carling, G. (2017). From three genders to two: the sociolinguistics of gender shift in the Jämtlandic dialect of Sweden. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, 49(1), 53–84.
