Gender Assignment to English-Origin Nouns in the Spanish of the Southwestern United States (Report‪)‬

ABSTRACT. This article analyzes the process of assigning gender to English-origin nouns. The two prevailing views are that the process is either done by default where masculine gender is simply assigned to all nouns or a natural process where gender is assigned using the same criteria as that of native Spanish nouns. To test the two hypotheses we used the comparative method to study the gender patterns of Spanish nouns and lone English-origin nouns in the Spanish of bilinguals living in New Mexico. Each of the nouns was analyzed for the factors of biological gender, synonymic gender, and the gender associated with the terminal phoneme. The results indicate that biological gender is categorical with animate nouns. When there is no biological gender, the gender of the terminal phoneme is the most accurate predictor. The results showed that borrowed nouns pattern morphologically like Spanish nouns supporting the Nonce Borrowing Hypothesis (Sankoff et al 1990) and the categorization of these nouns as borrowings rather than code-switches. 1. INTRODUCTION. A defining characteristic of casual speech among bilinguals in the southwest region of the United States is the mixing of Spanish and English. Due to the contact that has existed between these two languages for more than a century in this region, many speakers have similar proficiencies in English and Spanish. As a result, bilingual speakers frequently incorporate both languages within discourse with other bilinguals. Language mixing involves two major processes, borrowing and code-switching.