This study of gender was conceived when I first took up the position of lecturer in linguistics at the University of Tiibingen in 1975. My particular in­ terest in gender arose out of the work with German children and adults con­ ducted in the context of preparing my doctoral dissertation for the University of York; my position at the University of Tiibingen has given me the opportunity to carry out the necessary research in both Germany and Britain. The empirical investigations reported in this study were begun in my first year in Tiibingen and continued over a period of 7 years. In this connection, I would like to express my thanks to the staff and pupils of all the schools who participated in the testing: Kindergarten Waldhauser-Ost, Kindergarten Winkelwiese, Grundschule Wanne, Grundschule Waldhauser-Ost, and Albert Schweitzer Schule (Tiibingen); Somerford Junior and Infants School and Twynham Junior and Infants School (Christchurch, GB); Burdyke Infants, Badger Hill Junior and Infants School and Joseph Rowntree Junior School (York, GB). Thanks must also go to the families of Georg, Hanna and Gisela and of course to the children themselves, who allowed the intrusion of recording equipment so regularly into their homes. I am also grateful to the staff and students of the Universities of Tfibingen, York and Manchester who cooperated in several of the investigations.

Inhalt

1 Gender in Linguistic Description.- Ontology and Development of Gender.- The Grammatical Status of Noun Classification Systems.- Theories of Opposition and Markedness.- 2 A Comparison of the Gender Systems in English and German.- Parts of Speech Affected by Gender.- Semantic Rules.- Natural Gender Rule.- The Animacy and Personal Rule.- Common Gender Rule.- Personification Rule.- Other Semantic Rules.- Morphological Rules.- Derivational Suffixes.- Noun Compounds.- Phonetic Rules.- The Interaction of the Rule Types.- Function.- Anticipation of Content.- Marking of the Onset of a Noun Phrase.- Distinction of Singular and Plural.- Lexical Structuring.- Anaphoric Reference.- Deictic Reference.- Functional Importance of the Male/Female Opposition.- Summary.- 3 Rules and Speakers' Behaviour.- The Psychological Status of Morphological and Phonetic Rules of Gender Assignment of German Nouns.- Evidence from Loan Words.- The Experimental Testing of the Use of Phonetic Rules in Gender Assignment in Adult German Speakers.- The Psychological Status of Semantic Rules of Gender Assignment.- Evidence from Loan Words.- Conflict of Semantic and Grammatical Gender in German.- A Study of Metaphorical Extension in German.- Frequency of English Pronoun Forms and a Study of the Use of Generic 'he' in English Children's Literature.- The Psychological Status of Unmarked Terms.- Summary and Conclusions.- 4 The Acquisition of Gender in Children.- The Acquisition of Formal Rules in German.- Hypotheses.- Observational Acquisition Data.- Indefinite Article.- Definite Article.- Vocabulary Analysis.- Gender with Suffixes and Compounds.- Gender and Plural.- Relative Pronouns and Question Words.- Experimental Investigation.- Experimental Testing of the Selection of the Definite Article for Real Words by 5- to 6-Year-Old German Children.- Experimental Testing of the Use of Phonetic Rules in 7- to 8-Year-Old German Children.- Summary and Conclusions.- The Acquisition of Semantic Rules in English and German.- The Acquisition of the Animacy and Common Gender Rule.- Hypotheses.- Observational Acquisition Data.- The Use of Pronouns Referring to Animates and Inanimates in a Production Task by 5- to 10-Year-Old English and German Children.- The Use of Pronouns Referring to Animates and Inanimates in an 'Animating' Context Compared in English Adults and in 9- to 10-Year-Old Children.- Summary and Conclusions.- Acquisition of the Natural Gender Rule.- Hypotheses.- Observational Acquisition Data.- The Use of Pronouns Referring to Sex-Marked Persons in a Production Task by 3- to 4-Year-Old English and German Children.- Summary and Conclusions.- Implications for Explanatory Theories in Child Language Acquisition ..- The Interaction of Formal and Semantic Rules in Acquisition.- The Relative Notion of 'Clear Rule'.- Summary and Conclusions.- 5 Psychological Gender.- Language and Thought.- An Investigation of the Interrelationship of Grammatical Gender and Sex Assignment in English and German.- An Investigation of Sex Assignment in Children's Literature.- Experimental Testing of Sex Assignment.- The Testing of Sex Attributes.- Summary and Conclusions.- 6 Conclusions.- Appendices.- References.