170 Gunther De Vogelaer
dialectal system and the Standard Dutch one are found on other gender
agreement targets (e.g. demonstratives, adjectives,... see Taeldeman 1980
and Plevoets, Speelman and Geeraerts, to appear for a description).
According to Dutch reference grammars such as Haeseryn et al. (2002),
pronominal gender has changed accordingly, i.e. the use of personal pro-
nouns such as the subject forms hij ‘he’, ze ‘she’ and het ‘it’, the object
forms hem ‘him’, haar ‘her’ and het ‘it’ and the possessives zijn ‘his/its’
and haar ‘her’ to refer to antecedent nouns.^2 Especially the north of the
Dutch language area has seen a tendency to use etymologically masculine
pronouns in reference to both masculine and feminine nouns. The most
visible effect of such a system is the near-disappearance of the feminine
pronoun ze ‘she’, the use of which is confined to reference to female hu-
mans. Hence the system can be characterized as a grammatical two-gender
system. According to Audring (2006), however, some varieties are under-
going a more radical change in their pronominal usage, in that the gram-
matical system is being replaced by an innovative, semantic system. The
main parameter in this system is individuation: a high degree of individua-
tion is associated with etymologically masculine pronouns, a low degree of
individuation with neuter pronouns. The different behavior of count nouns
and mass nouns illustrates this system: countable nouns tend to trigger
masculine pronouns such as the weak form ‘m ‘him’ in (1a); mass nouns
are increasingly referred to with neuter pronouns such as ‘t ‘it’ in (1b). A
similar system is found in some regional varieties of English (Siemund
2002, 2008). Resemantisation is reported only in personal pronouns and in
relative pronouns, and does not appear to affect the adnominal system.
(1) Pronominal gender in northern vs. southern varieties (northern examples
from Audring 2006:95-96
a. [+count]:about dat boek ‘that book’ (neuter):
North:‘Dan moet ‘k ‘m ook niet gaan inleveren’ (semantic gend-
er)‘Then I shouldn’t return him yet’
South:‘Dan moet ‘k ‘t ook niet gaan inleveren’ (grammatical gender)
‘Then I shouldn’t return it yet’
b. [-count]: about olijfolie ‘olive oil’ (common/feminine):
North: ‘... hoe ‘t geconserveerd wordt’ (semantic gender)
‘... how it is preserved’
South: ‘... hoe ze geconserveerd wordt’ (grammatical gender)
‘... how she is preserved’