168 Gunther De Vogelaer
variation, however, this may very well be a problematic assumption. In this
paper it is shown that there are indeed cases in which the acquisition of an
aspect of grammar differs between varieties of one language. More specifi-
cally, regional differences are discussed in the way the gender system is
acquired in two varieties of Dutch, one spoken in the Netherlands and one
in the Dutch-speaking north of Belgium. That the relevant varieties are
spoken in different countries does not entail that the variation can be de-
scribed as resulting from the existence of different national varieties of
Dutch. Since both in the Netherlands and in Belgium there is significant
variation in the way grammatical gender is used by adults, variation is
equally likely to occur within the boundaries of each of the two countries
under investigation.
The paper is organized as follows: in section 2, the Dutch gender system
is described, both in synchronic and diachronic terms, and some of the lite-
rature on the acquisition of gender in Dutch, German and English is dis-
cussed. Section 3 and 4 provide an overview of the results of a survey on
pronominal gender in a Dutch and a Belgian variety of Dutch, respectively.
In section 5 the data for the two varieties of Dutch under discussion are
compared with each other and with the literature on the acquisition of
gender in German and English. From this comparison a number of predic-
tions can be drawn about the future of the Dutch gender system. Section 6
concludes this paper.
- Gender systems and language acquisition: the Dutch case
2.1. Dutch gender in transition
Recent centuries have seen dramatic changes in the Dutch gender system
(see Geerts 1966 for a description). Historically, Dutch, like German, dis-
tinguished three genders: masculine, feminine and neuter. Gender was
marked in two ways: first, adnominal elements such as articles and adjec-
tives agree in gender with the head noun of the noun phrase (‘adnominal
gender’). Second, personal pronouns take over the gender of the antecedent
noun to which they refer (‘pronominal gender’). As for the way gender is
assigned, there is no apparent semantic motivation for gender in Dutch,
although the gender for nouns referring to humans in general corresponds