Digital Commons Network^™

On The Assignment Of Gender To Chicano Anglicisms: Processes And Results, Robert N. Smead

Faculty Publications

The creation of neologisms through linguistic borrowing is a complex process. For donor language models to be transformed into host language replicas, phonological and morphological adaptation must take place. Part and parcel of that adaptation is the assignment of gender to loanwords in a host language like Spanish. The present article examines gender assignment in two corpora of loanwords (New Mexican and Southern Colorado Spanish: N=212 and General Chicano Spanish: N=595). Through the application of variable rule methodology (GoldVarb 2), five factors are posited as significant. Two of these categorically determine gender assignment when present: (1) the biological sex of …