'Ds Uscheni isch ledigs gsi'. Neutrale Genusreferenz auf männliche Personen im Walliserdeutschen

Abstract

In some German dialects the neuter gender can be used in reference to a female person. This language use deviates from the correlation between grammatical gender and sex, which has garnered interest in German studies. Current explanations assume that in the respective dialects, the neuter or female gender in association with female first names is assigned socio-pragmatically, i. e. according to kinship, social status, familiarity and similar parameters. However, the present study is about the use of the neuter gender in reference to a male person. This phenomenon can be observed in a Swiss German dialect called Walliserdeutsch. In this paper, the occurrence is shown through a sample consisting of data in Walliserdeutsch. The corpus contains spoken and written language taken from folk tales and parodies. The relation between sex and grammatical gender, gender agreement and the question about sociopragmatic gender assignment are the main focus of the analysis. The results show varying patterns of language use. Hence, it is not possible to determine a general recurring principle with regard to the data analysis.