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In:Varieties of German in Contact Settings: Studies in honor of William D. Keel
Edited by B. Richard Page and Michael T. Putnam
[Studies in Germanic Linguistics 10] 2025
► pp. 207–237

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Chapter 10
Optimizing gender of English loanwords in Pennsylvania Dutch

 | The Pennsylvania State University
 | American University
Published online: 27 November 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/sigl.10.10pa
Abstract
This case study investigates the gender assignment of English loanwords In Pennsylvania Dutch, a language that emerged among German speakers located primarily in Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century. To do so, we analyze English loanwords collected by Buffington (1941) from a 30,000-word Pennsylvania Dutch corpus. Our analysis of gender assignment applies Optimal Gender Assignment Theory (Rice 2006) as modified by Corteen (2018). Optimality Gender Assignment Theory (OGAT) provides a principled way to determine a default gender and to resolve conflicts that arise when competing factors indicate different genders for a given loanword. The study finds that OGAT is able to account for the gender of 68 (87.2%) of the 78 English loanwords in Buffington’s corpus.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Gender assignment in German and Pennsylvania Dutch
  • 3.Previous research on gender assignment of English loanwords in Pennsylvania Dutch
  • 4.Optimal gender assignment theory
  • 5.Corpus and methodology
  • 6.Applying OGAT to Pennsylvania Dutch
    • 6.1Gender feature constraints in PD
    • 6.2Compounds
    • 6.3Default gender in PD
  • 7.Conclusion
  • References
  • Appendix
References (43)
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DWDS = Digitales Wörterbuch deutscher Sprache
OED = Oxford English Dictionary
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