Gender reduction in contact

Abstract

The present paper investigates the reduction of gender assignment and agreement in a nineteenth-century Romani variety in contact with genderless Hungarian. This reduction took place within two generations of native speakers. We compare the geographical and sociolinguistic situation with the majority of present-day Romani varieties, which still maintain the original two-way (masculine, feminine) gender system. By comparing these varieties with the few Romani varieties which also display reduction of their gender system, we show that the development of this particular typological change may be the outcome of the minority situation of Romani and its geographical proximity to a genderless language. However, as rural varieties do not exhibit the same kind of erosion, this is not a sufficient explanation; what also appears to play a role in the Romani case is the urban context of the change. This sociolinguistic factor might also be considered in other case studies on the loss of grammatical gender.