182 Gunther De Vogelaer
4.2. Belgian Dutch gender and probabilistic grammars
Table 4, in which all the answers from the Belgian informants are given,
confirms the picture emerging from Figure 2: the grammatical three-gender
system does play a significant role, but many deviations are found. As in
the Netherlands, reference to humans (row 1) and to a lesser extent to ani-
mates (row 2) appears to be in line with natural gender. Especially in ani-
mates, some nouns do not reveal information on natural gender, and in such
cases children predominantly opt for hij ‘he’, although ze ‘she’ is used
quite frequently as well. Mass nouns (row 4) present a clear preference for
het ‘it’, and thus follow the system described by Audring (2006). As in the
Overijssel data, the third row (count nouns) does not show the expected
preference for hij ‘he’.
Table 4. Pronominal gender in 86 children from East Flanders (Belgium)
MASCULINE FEMININE NEUTER
HIJ ze het hij ZE het hij ze HEThuman: 98,83%^169 0,58%^1 0,58%^1 4,48%^6 94,78%^127 0,75%^1 38,37%^33 24,42%^21 37,21%^32animate: 80,59%^137 15,29%^26 4,12%^7 46,30%^50 52,78%^57 0,93%^1 42,20%^46 16,51%^18 41,28%^45count: 80,56%^145 7,22%^13 12,22%^22 33,01%^69 36,84%^77 30,14%^63 9,30%^8 8,14%^7 82,56%^71mass: 6,45%^8 8,87%^11 84,68%^105 15,12%^13 37,21%^32 47,67%^41 1,64%^1 6,56%^4 91,80%^56Table 5 orders the data for the count nouns along the categories relevant in
a dyadic grammatical system, i.e. a system distinguishing between common
(i.e. traditionally masculine or feminine) and neuter gender. Indeed a corre-
lation emerges between common gender and hij ‘he’, and between neuter
and het ‘it’. But here too, deviations are observed, as the pronoun het ‘it’ is
frequently used to refer to non-neuter countable referents (12,22% for tradi-
tional masculines and 30,14% for feminines). Since this use of non-
grammatical het ‘it’ clearly depends on the semantics of the antecedent (cf.
increasing proportions of het as one moves down in Table 4), Table 4 and 5