Losing the Feminine Gender in the Norwegian Dialect of Voss

The article reports on a study of the feminine gender in a Western dialect of Norway, using a production experiment eliciting the use of indefinite articles, possessives, adjectives, and the definite suffix. The participants (n=64) are of three age groups: children, adolescents, and adults. The results show that while the feminine gender is stable in the language of the adults, it is becoming vulnerable in the language of the children and adolescents. The main tendency is that feminine gender markers are being replaced with masculine markers. I argue that the innovations are interconnected and not random, and that numerous gender cues do not necessarily make the system more stable.