«Æi soL – soLa», but «en sol – solen»?

About the form and gender of lexemes in the local dialect of Trøgstad

Abstract

Several Norwegian dialects are in the process of transitioning from a three-gender-system to a two-gender-system (see Busterud et al., 2020; Lødrup, 2011; Stabell, 2016; Westergaard & Rodina, 2016). This study examines whether there is a link between the form of the lexeme and its grammatical gender assignment in the local dialect of Trøgstad. This article is a further development of my MA thesis (Wiig, 2023) and is based on recordings of 20 informants of different ages from the old municipality of Trøgstad. The study investigates lexemes with a local pronunciation different from the levelled, “standard Eastern Norwegian” equivalent form, and the gender assignment of these forms in their singular forms. The findings are compared to earlier studies of gender assignment in both the written language Bokmål and in spoken Norwegian (see Lundquist et al., 2022; Kola, 2014). Findings indicate that lexemes in the local form are used with traditional feminine gender markers to a much larger extent than their levelled counterparts. For some lexemes, an explicit distinction has arisen between the levelled and the local form, where the same speaker uses masculine gender markers for the levelled form and feminine markers for the local form. I argue that both the form and the frequency of the lexeme in speech could affect gender assignment. I also argue that the development where younger speakers use a two-gender system might to some degree be tied to the general levelling process in Norway where younger speakers use fewer local forms in their speech.