Gender at the Edge
Halldo´r A´ rmann SigurLsson

This article develops an analysis of Gender whereby D-gender enters
grammar as a feature variable (edge linker), without a fixed value,
either probing n or scanning the context for a value. Only the latter
strategy is available in pronominal gender languages such as English,
as they lack n-gender, whereas both strategies are applicable in n-
gender languages, variably so for variable DPs, depending on their nP
content and on context. The article adopts the idea that context linking
does not merely involve pragmatic context scanning but also has a
syntactic side to it, edge computation, whereby context-scanned and
recycled features are computed at the phase edge in relation to CP-
internal elements, via edge linkers. The context-linking approach has
been previously launched for Tense and Person. This article extends
it to Gender, thereby generalizing over context-sensitive grammatical
categories and developing a novel view of the overall architecture of
gramática.

Palabras clave: context linking, edge computation, edge linkers, D-gender,
Gender, feature recycling, Icelandic, n-gender, pronominal gender lan-
calibres

1 Introducción

The prevailing view in generative syntax, adopted in Chomsky 1995 and much related work, es
eso (cid:2)-features are part of presyntactic lexical items, treated as units in syntax (“a unit, the set
de (cid:2)-features”; Chomsky 2000:121). The opposite view is that individual features are distinct
objects. Under such an approach, (cid:2)-feature bundles are not provided by a presyntactic lexicon,
instead being computed in syntax and subsequently bundled up and externalized as units in the
externalization component (morphology/PF). I adopt this alternative view here. More generally,
like many other researchers, I adopt a Minimalist atomic view of grammatical features.

On this atomic view, the category of Gender is underlyingly distinct from Person, Número,
and Case, even though it is commonly expressed in tandem with these categories, within a single
lexical item, such as English M.SG.3P.NOM he or Icelandic M.PL.3P.NOM sto´lar, M.PL.3P.DAT sto´lum
‘chairs’, and so on.1 The lexical externalization of feature bundles is a murky issue that I will
not address here. Sin embargo, being “the most puzzling of the grammatical categories” according
to Corbett (1991:1), Gender poses further puzzles. One is that Gender is sometimes semantic
(interpretable in the sense of Chomsky 1995), as in he, sometimes formal, as in Icelandic sto´lar,
sto´lum. A second one, closely related to the semantic/formal puzzle, is that Gender is sometimes

I am grateful to the reviewers and also to the European editor of LI, Eric Reuland, for very helpful discussions and
comments. The research for this article is part of a project on pronouns and pronoun features, partly funded by a grant
from Riksbankens Jubelumsfond, P15-0389:1.

1 I refer to the general category of Gender with a capital G, otherwise using a lowercase g.

Linguistic Inquiry, Volumen 50, Número 4, Caer 2019
723–749

(cid:2) 2019 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Publicado bajo una atribución Creative Commons 4.0
Internacional (CC POR 4.0) licencia.
https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00329

723

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H A L L D O´ R A´ R M A N N S I G U R D S S O N

independent of the CP-external context, as in sto´lar, sto´lum, but sometimes dependent on the CP-
external context, as in he, where the pronoun somehow relates to the linguistic or pragmatic
contexto ( Johni is nice. Hei . . . ).2 A third puzzle is that Gender is a category both of nouns and
of DPs more generally, including pronouns.3

These are the problems I aim at explicating. An initial caveat is relevant here: I will not
discuss numerous other issues that concern Gender in one way or another, including typological
aspects of Gender (Corbett 1991) (with one exception in section 4), the semantics and markedness
of individual (cid:2)-valores (Sauerland 2008, Spathas 2010, Percus 2011), and Corbett’s (1979) famous
Agreement Hierarchy (for a recent study of the latter, see Wurmbrand 2017).4 Más importante,
even though the article addresses the relation between n-gender and D-gender, it is not about n-
gender as such. Eso es, it is not about the correlation between noun roots and n-gender in individual
idiomas, sometimes predictable, sometimes not (idiosyncratic or idiomatic), nor is it about
lexical aspects of n-gender (apart from “natural” gender). I simply adopt the widely held view
that n-gender is located in n (alternatively in the n-edge, if it contains more than just n-gender).
See the discussion in, Por ejemplo, Josefsson 1998, Kramer 2014, 2015, 2016, Ku?erova´ 2018.5
Detailed discussions of (cid:2)-features other than Gender and of DP structure also fall outside the
scope and ambitions of this article.

This article is primarily about the syntax of Gender, En particular, the above-mentioned three
problemas: the context/noncontext split, the semantic/formal split, and the D/n-gender split. Como
it turns out, these problems are all related. They all concern relations across domains, y eso
is what I will largely restrict my discussion to. In pursuing these issues, I adopt the view that
there are both high and low Gender locations within the (full) DP. I refer to these locations as
D and n and argue that D-gender and n-gender must be distinguished, despite commonly being
“in agreement.” This is not a new idea; I share it with many others (ver, p.ej., Steriopolo and
Wiltschko 2010, Matushansky 2013, Pesetsky 2013, Landau 2016b, Ku?erova´ 2018). The novel-

2 The noncontext/context and formal/semantic splits commonly overlap, formal gender thus normally being insensi-

tive to context. Sin embargo, there are cases where formal gender is contextually active. See section 4.

3 This third issue might seem to be unproblematic if the gender of a DP is simply in agreement with its noun gender.
Sin embargo, that does not extend to pronouns, which do not have any internal noun gender. Elaborating on Postal 1966,
Elbourne (2005) and Collins and Postal (2012) argue that pronominal DPs contain a silent nP complement of D: Maryi
is nice. [Ella [Mary]]i . . . (which would automatically yield the gender of the pronominal D if a name like Mary is
inherently feminine; see also the conceptually related approach in Kayne 2002). I adopt the more traditional view that
pronominal gender is context-dependent, arguing for that position in sections 3–5.

4 The Agreement Hierarchy is a catchy descriptive tendency generalization, saying, apenas, that agreement between
two elements is the more likely the structurally closer to each other they are (which is entirely compatible with much
generative work on agreement and with the present approach). In his pioneering work on Gender and agreement, Corbett
(p.ej., 1979, 1991, 2006) has presented voluminous data from numerous languages that bear on the generalization.

5 Even under this common assumption, n-gender may be conceived of as either presyntactic, syntactic, or postsyntac-
tic. I assume that it is both syntactic and a postsyntactic morphology/PF category, but not presyntactic. Ku?erova´ (2018)
adopts the view that n-gender is presyntactically lexical, developing a detailed analysis of Italian n-gender. The processes
she describes are in my view partly syntactic, partly postsyntactic (PF-lexical), as suggested by the fact that different
processes would have to be assumed for other gender languages, including Icelandic. Sin embargo, as I am not concerned
with lexical aspects of Gender (apart from natural gender), I abstain from discussing this in more detail. These different
views on how noun roots combine with n-gender have no bearing on my analysis of the relation between n- y D-
género, or on my understanding of D- and DP-gender.

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G E N D E R A T T H E E D G E

725

ties here are the claims (a) that D-gender is a reflex of an edge linker, (b) that D-gender is
commonly assigned under pragmatic context scanning, yielding recycling of contextual gender,
y (C) that the recycled gender values are computed at the D-edge in relation to CP-internal
categories, including case.

The context/noncontext split is the least understood of the three splits. It has been widely
discussed in the typological literature (in Corbett 1991 and many other works), but it has received
limited attention in Minimalist approaches. Ku?erova´ 2018 is an exception, presenting a serious
discussion of the problem, arguing that transfer or spell-out to PF takes place either prior to transfer
to the conceptual-intentional (C-I) interface (noncontextual gender) or after transfer (contextual
género). This interesting albeit unorthodox idea is not without problems. Primero, it raises a number
of questions, not addressed by Ku?erova´: why there should be two distinct transfers (or spell-
salidas) to PF and only one to C-I, what the relation (and the division of labor) between the distinct
PF transfer processes is, and what principles decide when each of the two applies. Segundo, como
the C-I interface is the meeting place of extrasyntactic pragmatics and semantics provided by
syntax, spell-out to PF after transfer to C-I would seem to suggest that pragmatics has free access
to formal PF morphology.

Pragmatics has some access to syntax, hence also some access to postsyntactic formal mor-
phology, but in the approach pursued here this access is strictly confined to context linking via
phase edge linkers (see sections 2–5). The present approach thus enables us to retain the standard
assumption (Chomsky 2001, 2008) that transfer to both the interfaces takes place at one and the
same point in the derivation.6 There is a converging aspect to Ku?erova´’s and my approaches,
aunque, in that I argue and present evidence that gender interpretation of the DP as a whole is
delayed until the CP containing the DP meets its context, which means that transfer must have
alguno (limitado) sight of C-I (sugerencia, Sucesivamente, that transfer to both C-I and PF is a later process
than commonly assumed). Sin embargo, as this applies to DPs in general, including even formally
gendered DPs (mira la sección 4), it contradicts Ku?erova´’s central claim that formally gendered DPs
are spelled out prior to (rather than parallel to) C-I transfer or C-I access.7

As a key to understanding the context/noncontext Gender split, I adopt the nonlexicalist
context-linking approach developed in a series of earlier works (p.ej., h. A´ . SigurLsson 2004,
2011a,b, 2014, 2016, 2017). In this approach, phase edges contain abstract edge linkers that serve
to link the phase to its context, either to the silent speech act context or to the overt linguistic

6 That the externalization component, from formal morphology to phonetics, is complex and layered is a distinct

asunto.

7 Ku?erova´’s (2018) perspective is rather narrowly Italian. She claims that vocalic suffixes in Italian, such as -o,
are markers of both class and gender in some nouns, such as il libro ‘the.M book’, while being markers of class only in
nouns like il/la chirurgo ‘the.M/ F surgeon’. Respectivamente, she can analyze gender interpretation of the latter type as
exclusively semantic. This may be correct for Italian (mira la sección 3), but it does not extend to other gender languages.
Compatible nouns in many other gender languages (Icelandic læknir ‘doctor’, etc.) are formally D/n-gendered, but their
DPs as a whole may nevertheless receive semantic gender interpretation that contradicts their formal D/n-gender (as will
be discussed in section 4). As we will see in sections 3 y 4, formal gender need not always project to DP, which offers
a simple account of the fact that DP-gender interpretation may contradict formal D/n-gender (in case there is a semantic
basis for such a split).

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context in discourse or a superordinate phase, under context scanning (including control). Two
such linkers are the speech time feature, TS, and the logophoric agent (speaker) feature, (cid:3)A,
which normally link CP-internal Tense and Person to the coordinates of the speech act but may
alternatively (in sequences of tenses and Person shift phenomena) link them to overt antecedents
in the immediately preceding linguistic context. I adopt this approach here, aiming to develop it
further. Invariably, I hypothesize, there is also a syntactic side to context linking, whereby context-
scanned features are computed at the phase edge in relation to CP-internal elements. I refer to
this phenomenon as edge computation. This linking-and-computation approach goes against the
widely adopted assumption that syntax is autonomous and context-free: even though Merge as
such is context-independent, the linking of one phase to another or to the wider context is not.
Eso es, contra Chomsky (1957:17), we are not “forced to conclude that grammar is autonomous
and independent of meaning,” at least not if “meaning” includes contextual grammatical relations,
such as the relations between event participants and speech act participants (commonly expressed
by Person), between speech time and event time (commonly expressed by Tense), or between
event participants and discourse participants (commonly expressed by Gender).8

In this article, I explore the nature of Gender under this nonlexicalist linking-and-computation
perspectiva. The empirical issues bearing on the approach include above all the three aforemen-
tioned splits, but I also address a number of other empirical issues: pronominal gender in languages
that lack noun gender, such as English; distant gender valuation across CP-boundaries; combined
edge computation (resolution) of gender values under split antecedenthood; general delayed gender
interpretation of DPs; and gender assignment to PRO. Some of these issues have been widely
discussed in the typological literature, but none has been given a generally received account in
Minimalist approaches. The last three (gender valuation under split antecedenthood, general de-
layed gender interpretation, and gender assignment to PRO) have not been highlighted elsewhere,
as far as I am aware.9 In addition to presenting previously unnoticed data on these issues (principalmente
from Icelandic), the most important contributions of the article, not found elsewhere, are as
follows. Primero, it presents arguments that D-gender can be coherently understood as a reflex of
an edge linker and that Gender thereby yields support to the context-linking approach. Segundo,
it further develops and extends a theory of the intriguing phenomenon of edge computation.

Before I address the Gender issue, I offer preparatory comments on the more general lexi-
California(ismo) issue and edge computation, in section 2. Readers familiar with the edge-linking approach
can go directly to section 3, which contains initial observations about the D/n-gender split and
pronominal gender. Sección 4 analyzes the relations among n-, D-, and DP-gender in n-gender
idiomas. Sección 5 discusses context linking and edge computation of Gender. Sección 6 summa-
rizes.

8 Sin embargo, I make no overall claims about the context-syntax interface(s). The linking-and-computation approach
is minimalistic, aiming at furthering our understanding of formal feature relations across domains; mira la sección 2. El
arguments in favor of syntactic autonomy in Chomsky 1957 are in my view valid (see also Adger 2017); they just do
not apply to feature relations across domains (es decir., the approach must be broadened by taking context linking into account).
9 Apart from scattered observations in some of my own work. Gender resolution under coordinated antecedenthood
has been widely discussed in the Gender literature (in Corbett 1991, 2006 and many other works), but I have not been
able to detect any work that considers gender resolution (combined gender computation) under split antecedenthood. Ver
sección 5.

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2 Fondo: The Lexical Issue in Minimalism and Edge Computation

Words or lexical items are traditionally taken to be the building blocks operated on in syntax,
even though it has been commonly assumed (as in Chomsky’s work, 1957 onward) that syntax
also operates with or on more abstract elements, such as C, t (I, Aux), v, norte, and Case. Chomsky
(2007:6) thus suggests, “In addition to Merge . . . , Ud.[niversal] GRAMO[rammar] must at least provide
atomic elements, lexical items, each a structured array of properties (características) to which Merge
and other operations apply to form expressions.” Referring to a structured array of properties as
atomic is a contradiction if taken literally, but if this is understood as “atomic to syntax,” the
paradox might disappear. On this more generous interpretation, sin embargo, a thorny issue arises:
the composition problem. If syntax operates with complex items, with a structured array of proper-
corbatas, then there must be some presyntactic item factory where such items are composed out of
more atomic elements (Pustejovsky 1995 and related work; también, de facto, Chomsky 1995). Cómo-
alguna vez, while there must be a postsyntactic item factory (see shortly), a presyntactic generative
lexicon is incompatible with the basic tenets of the Minimalist Program. There is nothing mini-
malistic about assuming both a presyntactic generative lexicon and generative syntax, e incluso
if we were to adopt such an approach, there is nothing minimalistic about assuming a presyntactic
generative lexicon per se, comprising, decir, 40,000 elementos, most of which are composite, containing
elements such as roots, categorial markers (v, norte, pag, . . .), and even categories that express relations,
such as Case, Person, and Tense (as in I, a nosotros, talked). A generative lexicon (cid:3) generative syntax
approach is much too unconstrained and powerful, hence nonexplanatory.

The lexicalist approach yields severe complications. To give one simple example: Regular
Icelandic adjectives have 144 different feature combinations (of case, number, género, definite-
ness, degree; see Pfaff 2015), expressed by 30 distinct forms. Assuming a full-fledged inflected
presyntactic lexicon, as in Chomsky 1995, suggests feature access in syntax and 144 diferente
syntactic computations (both inescapable on any account), plus 144 different lexical formations
( yielding “only” 30 formas), plus 144 o 30 different lexical searches (depending on how the
mechanism works), plus feature access in a presyntactic lexicon (raising nontrivial questions about
the division of labor between syntax and the putative presyntactic lexicon).

Internalization of already established externalized expressions (the second factor in the sense
of Chomsky 2005) is obviously part of language acquisition in communities with full-fledged
externalized languages, but it can hardly have played any part in the emergence of language. En
its initial historical state (decir, 100,000 years ago), the faculty of language or Universal Grammar
(UG) cannot plausibly have had access to thousands of complex “lexical items, each a structured
array of properties (características)”—at least not if the emergence of language was due to a sudden
and minimal biological change in our species, “involving some slight rewiring of the brain”
(Berwick and Chomsky 2011:27). Chomsky has expressed more abstract views on the lexical
issue (ver, p.ej., 2001:10, 2008:139), but these alternative formulations do not resolve or escape
the composition problem. Tensed verb forms, pronouns, cased nouns and adjectives, etcétera,
are composite elements, and they must be composed somewhere.

On a biological view of the language faculty (as in Berwick and Chomsky 2011, 2016), el
natural assumption is that UG is not only computationally minimal but also item-minimal. En ese caso,

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UG provides the general premises for item building rather than the items themselves. Pursuing
an approach along these lines, I have suggested (in H. A´ . SigurLsson 2011b) that the only building
elements provided by UG are two empty cells—Root Zero and the initial edge feature, Característica
Zero—propagated by fission and filled with content from the Concept Mine, a conceptual capacity
that is not specifically linguistic but is accessible to syntax, feeding it with raw material for item
and structure building. According to this Zero Hypothesis, all item formation in I-language takes
place in syntax, Root Zero and Feature Zero being the parents of all I-language items and structures,
and complex items and structures being formed by Agree and iterated Merge (internal and external)
of content-filled roots and features.10

This applies to I-language. Individual externalized languages have large storages or lexicons
of complex signs or expressions, auditory, visual, or tactile, created in the externalization compart-
ment of language. De este modo, full-fledged languages contain two distinct factories: the minimalistic
syntactic machinery, building I-language items and structures, and a nonminimalistic postsyntactic
externalization machinery, building externalized expressions, such as English grandmother or
Icelandic Sign Language two-fingers-across-forehead (apenas), also meaning ‘grandmother’
(one-finger-across-forehead meaning ‘mother’). Within generative syntax, this externalization
compartment is traditionally referred to as PF—which, given the existence of visual and tactile
sign languages, should stand for Perceptible Form (alternatively, Produced Form). Intriguing
questions arise about the structure of the PF lexicon in individual languages and its relation to
I-language syntax, but I must set these issues aside here.11 Let me just say that it is obvious that
the role of the PF lexicon in communication expands dramatically as the individual matures (en
a linguistically communicating society), but it should be equally obvious, at least to the linguist,
that there is no general one-to-one correlation between the items and structures of I-language
and PF expressions.12 This is most straightforwardly evidenced by various kinds of systematic,
meaningful silence or “dark matter” in externalized languages: full clause silence in yes and no
answers (Holmberg 2016), null arguments, gapping, VP-ellipsis, sluicing, etcétera.

One example, relevant for our purposes, is the extensive “darkness” or silence of C and
other phase edges. So-called phase “heads,” such as C, v, y D, are arguably not discrete elements

10 Merge is a prerequisite for structure building, but it is not obvious or evident that it is language-specific (katz
and Pesetsky 2011), nor is it obvious that the emergence of language only involved Merge. Plausibly, access of syntax
to the Concept Mine was a crucial step (see also Reinhart 2006, 2016, Reuland 2017; my criticism of lexicalism does
not bear on the “conceptual lexicalism” in these works). There are nontrivial constraints on the syntax-concept relation,
as evidenced by the fact that only a limited set of central conceptual categories enter formal grammars (numerosity and
time in contrast to color or brightness, Por ejemplo). I must set this aside here, but for relevant discussion, see Cinque
2013 and Adger 2017.

11 Notice, Por ejemplo, that late language learning (including second language learning and learning of scholarly
campos) involves a large amount of word and concept internalization, raising the question of whether internalized concepts
are analyzed in terms of innate concepts and whether innate and internalized concepts are stored side by side or separately.
Plausibly, internalized concepts must be compatible with or licensed by the innate Concept Mine. These and related
questions are far beyond the scope of the present study.

12 Contra the Frege/Montague tradition in philosophy. As Berwick and Chomsky (2011:40) estado, “Communication
is a more-or-less affair, in which the speaker produces external events and hearers seek to match them as best they can
to their own internal resources.”

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but edge domains, containing an “array of functional categories” (Chomsky 2001:43n8) that are
each below the level of materialization. En ese caso, edge categories start out atomic and distributed
and get wrapped up in the derivation ( perhaps as part of labeling; see Ku?erova´ 2018).

Consider regular English main vs. subordinate clauses, as in (1).

(1) a. [CP

[TP Mary smiled]].
b. [CP Did [TP Mary smile]]?
C. [CP (that/if . . .) [TP Mary smiled]].

C contains (cid:2)
C contains did
C contains that/if . . . o (cid:2)

Obviamente, C is not (cid:2), did, eso, si, etcétera. Bastante, C is a domain of largely silent categories
that are either not materialized at all or jointly materialized, meagerly and differently so in different
contextos. C is just a label or a name for the edge domain of CP, useful as such. PF building
bloques (auditory, visual, or tactile) are quite distinct and much farther removed from syntactic
atoms than commonly assumed in linguistic theorizing (including Distributed Morphology ap-
se acerca). If I-language syntax is a (or even the) language of thought (as in Berwick and Chomsky
2011 and much related work), then it is not surprising that some of its structures (“thoughts”)
are barely spelled out or remain silent in PF.

Another thorny background issue must be addressed here, albeit only briefly; call it the
materialization problem. If phase edge categories are “quarks,” each below the level of materializa-
ción, then there is no way of studying their interrelations or the putative internal structure of phase
edges by merely looking at phase edges and their in-situ PF exponents (como (cid:2) and that in
(1)).13 Trying to explicate the internal properties of phase edges is thus like studying chemistry
without a microscope. The best we can do at the present state of knowledge and understanding
is discover indirect evidence that phase edges do contain silent elements by studying visible
effects of these elements at a distance (somewhat similarly, although there is no way of measuring
gravity directly, the bending of light provides indirect evidence for gravity and general relativity).
Aquí, I will briefly review some indirect evidence for the syntactic activity of the speech time
feature, TS, and the logophoric agent (speaker) feature, (cid:3)A (for much more detailed discussion,
see my previous work, including H. A´ . SigurLsson 2014, 2016).

TS is normally valued as identical to (simultaneous with) the speaker NOW under context
scanning, as sketched in (2). I refer to context scanning as control here (control being a subcase
of context scanning).

(2) NOW

[CP . . . TS . . . ]

identical

Control (yielding identity)

Clause-internal event time and reference time (in the sense of Reichenbach 1947), here denoted
as TE and TR, are in turn computed in relation to the TS value, as past, nonpast (en efecto, simultane-

13 It is a nontrivial challenge to define the cutoff point of materialization under the present approach, as under any
otro. A related intriguing issue is “how far” internal language can develop without externalization (consider the example
of Helen Keller; for discussion, see Tallerman 2014 and the references there).

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H A L L D O´ R A´ R M A N N S I G U R D S S O N

ous or future in languages like English), etcétera. Obviamente, I cannot go deep into tense logic
aquí (but see, p.ej., Hornstein 1990, Giorgi and Pianesi 1997), so I only illustrate this in (3) para
the simple past tense, where TE (cid:4) TR (as in, p.ej., Mary wrote the letter), and in (4) for the past-
in-the-past reading of a past perfect clause (as in, p.ej., Mary had written the letter).

(3)

[CP . . . TS . . . [TP . . . TR . . . [vP . . . EL . . . ]]]
wrote

wrote

Simple past: TS (cid:2) TR (cid:3) EL

Agree (yielding valuation)

pasado

nonpast
(simultaneous)

(4)

[CP . . . TS . . . [TP . . . TR . . . [vP . . . EL . . . ]]]
had

written

pasado

pasado

Past-in-the-past: TS (cid:2) TR (cid:2) EL

Agree (yielding valuation)

Much as TS is usually set as identical to the speaker NOW, the logophoric agent feature, (cid:3)A,
is set as identical to the actual SPEAKER by default. Being defaults, these settings are nonsyntactic,
but the values of TS and (cid:3)A become syntactically active CP-internally, as evidenced by overt tense
and person markings. In certain cases, también, TS and (cid:3)A themselves are syntactically controlled. Este
is what happens in sequences of tenses (SOT) and in Person shift (a subcase of indexical shift;
ver, p.ej., Anand 2006).

Consider this first for SOT. Subordinate clauses have a secondary, embedded TS (the perspec-
tive time in Kiparsky 2002) that may be set either as identical to the speaker NOW (via the matrix
TS), by default, or as identical to the matrix clause event time, TE1, the latter being the case in
SOT clauses, as in (5).14

(5)

a.
b.

(When I called her) Maryi said that shei was writing a letter.
[CP . . . TE1 . . .

[CP . . . TS2 . . .

TE2 . . . ]]

dicho

eso

era (writing a letter)

identical
Control

nonpast (“present”)
Agree

Notice that past tense forms in SOT, such as was in (5), are uninterpreted at the semantic or the
C-I interface, arguably being assigned morphology in PF (es decir., after transfer); hence, ellos son
invisible at C-I, as suggested by the fact that languages such as Russian and Japanese have the
same SOT semantics as English in examples comparable to (5) without concomitant overt Tense
agreement: (When I called her) Mary said that she is writing a letter (ver, p.ej., Comrie 1986,
Ogihara 1996). What is Tense interpreted at C-I in (5), as in the corresponding Russian and
Japanese structures, is the syntactic relations between TE1, TS2, and TE2, and not the overtly
tensed form was.15

14 The subordinate reference time (TR2) is simultaneous with the subordinate event time (TE2) en (5), thus not

indicated.

15 The morphological PAST being passed down the Tense chain under uninterpreted top-down PF agreement. Allá
is abundant evidence that uninterpretable PF agreement, as opposed to abstract Agree, applies postsyntactically in a top-
down fashion, but discussing this here would take us too far afield. For some observations, aunque, mira la sección 4.

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731

Much like TS, the logophoric agent feature, (cid:3)A, may be set under matrix control (en cambio
of receiving the default speaker value). This is what happens in Person shift contexts, como en el
Inglés (6).

(6) Hei’s like Ii don’t care.

Under the edge linker approach, the Person shift in (6) receives the control analysis in (7).

(7)

[CP . . . hei . . . [CP . . . {`A}i . . . [TP . . . Ii . . .

identical
Control

DP(cid:4)`A
Agree

Eso es, it is the (cid:3)A linker that is shifted (the pronoun itself receiving the same local (cid:3)(cid:3)A reading
as elsewhere). Person shift thus parallels the Tense shift seen in SOT: in both phenomena, un
edge linker is shifted under local control.16

Both Tense shift (SOT) and Person shift are subject to minimality. As for Person shift,
compare (8) con (7) ( potential reference to the speaker “Mary” does not involve a shift and is
thus irrelevant here).

(8) [“Mary”j speaking:] And hei’s like shek’s like Ik/*i don’t care.

While the shifted pronoun refers to the matrix subject (él) en (7), it cannot do so across the
intervening subject she in (8), due to minimality.

The same limitation applies to SOT, as illustrated in (9); aquí, the indexing indicates Tense

identity (simultaneousness).

(9) a. Mary saidi that she wasi writing a letter.

b. At dinner Bill claimedi that Mary saidk at breakfast that she wask/*i writing a letter.

Much as the first person pronoun cannot refer to the matrix subject in (8), the time of Mary’s
writing in (9b) cannot be distinct from the time of her saying (under an SOT reading) and instead
the same as some different event time, such as that of Bill’s claim at dinner. This locality is what
is expected on a syntactic approach to Person and Tense computation, while it would be mysterious
on a global semantic account. The computation of both Person and Tense is evidently subject to
minimality and immune to pragmatics.17

16 This is only a very brief sketch, not doing justice to the complexities involved in Person valuation, as a reviewer
rightly remarks. Issues that I cannot discuss here include de se vs. de re readings (p.ej., Chierchia 1989, Anand 2006),
bound variable readings of pronouns, including fake indexicals (Rullmann 2004, Kratzer 2009), and the interaction of
number and inclusiveness with Person. For discussions of these and related problems, see H. A´ . SigurLsson 2014, 2017.
The purpose of this section is to only briefly outline the general gist of my context-linking approach, so as to be able to
extend it to Gender.

17 Pero, obviamente, it is open to pragmatic input under context scanning via the edge linkers, a phenomenon distinct
from and independent of the computational mechanism itself. Even double-access Tense readings are accommodated
(h. A´ . SigurLsson 2016), but I refrain from discussing this here.

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H A L L D O´ R A´ R M A N N S I G U R D S S O N

As seen in the examples above, CP-internal Person and Tense are assigned values that are
computed at a phase edge, via an edge linker. I hypothesize that edge computation is a general
property of phase edges and adopt the informal approach in (10).

(10) Edge computation

For any phase edge, PE, it holds that
a. PE has syntactically active edge linkers;
b. PE recycles features ( propiedades) from the phase context, either the overt linguistic

context or the silent speech act context, via the edge linkers;

C. the recycled features are computed at PE in relation to an element or elements in

the inner phase.

This raises intriguing questions: a saber, what contextual features are involved, how they are
“received” in the phase edge (es decir., by which edge linkers), how they are computed in relation to
the inner phase, and what elements in the inner phase are involved. I do not pretend that I have
answers to all these questions; this is largely unexplored territory. Let me just contend that we
need to step cautiously here, so as not to open Pandora’s box. I assume that edge computation
is limited to formal feature relations across phases, and that the set of edge linkers is accordingly
limited to elements that enter formal feature computations. By “virtual conceptual necessity,” this
includes the coordinates of the speech event (the origo in Bu¨hler 1934), minimally a speaker
feature, a hearer feature, and the time and location of speech. Definiteness and topicality are
presumably also computed via edge linkers, although I will not explore that here. What I will do
in the rest of this article is present arguments and evidence that D-gender is a reflex of a D-edge
linker, D/G(cid:4), and illustrate how edge computation works for Gender. This is only a small step
on a long journey toward further understanding of formal context linking and edge computation,
pero, without access to a “microscope,” it will have to do for the present.

Let us now leave this general background and return to the category of Gender.

3 The D-Gender/n-Gender Split and the Gender of Pronouns: Initial Observations

Most gender languages have n-gender (see Corbett 1991). Sin embargo, some languages, incluido
Afrikaans, Defaka, Inglés, and Zande (Audring 2008), have pronominal gender but no n-gender.
Eso es, they have D-gender in the D-edge of the pronominal DP phase, without any gender
support from the lower nP-domain.

(11)

DP

D-edge
. . . D/G(cid:5) . . .

(nP)

(n-edge

√ROOT)

Following Audring (2008) y otros, I refer to languages with exclusively pronominal gender,
such as English, as pronominal gender languages. Regardless of whether we assume that pronomi-

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G E N D E R A T T H E E D G E

733

nal DPs contain a silent nP complement of D or not (see footnote 3), the gender of pronouns in
such languages is not provided by n or the n-edge. De este modo, these languages simply demonstrate the
D/n-gender split; we need to distinguish between the two, as stated in section 1. Fundamentalmente, el
D-gender linker enters grammar without a fixed value (as do TS and (cid:3)A); as we will see, it can
be assigned a value on the basis of either information external to the DP or information internal
lo (the latter strategy being prominent in n-gender languages).

Some languages with n-gender actually also have cases of D-gender in noun DPs without
any evident n-gender support. This applies for example to Italian noun DPs like il/la musicista
‘the.M/ F musician’ and il/la chirurgo ‘the.M/ F surgeon’. There are two ways of analyzing such
DPs: either they have two different but homophonous roots, each selecting its own n-gender, o
they have a single root, not selecting any n-gender (see the discussion in, p.ej., Percus 2011,
Kramer 2014, 2015, 2016, Ku?erova´ 2018). On the latter assumption, which I adopt here (ver
also Ku?erova´ 2018), these DPs are like pronouns in having D-gender but no n-gender, their D-
gender being semantically or pragmatically assigned, on the basis of the biological gender of the
referent, without any n-gender aid.18

A somewhat different kind of evidence for the D/n-gender split comes from DP-internal
gender schisms between the D-domain and the n-domain, showing that D-gender is accessible to
context-bound semantic gender interpretation, albeit only in certain exceptional cases. One type
involves a handful of examples like Icelandic hans æruverLuga ha´tign ‘his.M honorable.F majes-
ty.F’, where the possessive genitive is masculine (referring to a male) while the noun meaning
‘majesty’ (ha´tign in Icelandic) is feminine, triggering feminine agreement of the adjective ‘honora-
ble’ (æruverLuga; the masculine would be æruverLugi, ungrammatical in this example). Otro
type involves a handful of examples like Russian %na’a novyj vra? ‘our.F new.M doctor.M’. Este
has been widely discussed in the Gender literature, so I will not go into details here (see Corbett
1979, 1991 and many other works, including Audring 2009, Steriopolo and Wiltschko 2010,
Matushansky 2013, Pesetsky 2013, Landau 2016b, mi. F. SigurLsson 2017). Plainly, there is evi-
dencia, coming from several types of data, that D- and n-gender are distinct; exceptionally, they can
even be assigned distinct values within a DP, although they are most commonly “in agreement.”19
Gender assignment/interpretation in pronominal gender languages is widely conceived of
as semantic (p.ej., Corbett 1991, Audring 2008, 2009). The semantics involved is lexical in the
sense that it relates to the semantics of the noun referred to by the pronoun, primarily in the case

18 Por otro lado, the double-root analysis might apply to noun DPs like il ragazzo ‘the boy’ and la ragazza
‘the girl’ (but for a different analysis, see Ku?erova´ 2018). The double-root analysis would in any event seem to be
plausible, Por ejemplo, for Swedish pairs like en/ett studerande ‘a.C student’/‘a.N study’, despite the complete homophony
of the common-gender vs. the neuter nouns, and also for frequent Icelandic short-name pairs like Do´ri, Siggi (machos) vs.
Do´ra, Sigga (hembras).

19 I do not have a theory of why DP-internal D/n-gender schisms of this sort are heavily lexically restricted, impossible
in most gender languages but sporadically possible in a handful of languages/constructions, nor does anyone else to my
conocimiento (but for descriptions and discussions, see the above-cited works).

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H A L L D O´ R A´ R M A N N S I G U R D S S O N

of nouns with so-called natural gender semantics, such as girl, boy, daughter, son.20 However,
lexical information is accessible to postsyntactic semantics/pragmatics (the C-I interface), so I
assume that gender access to noun semantics of this sort is contextual (and not narrowly CP-
internally syntactic): a pronoun interprets its antecedent in discourse in terms of (cid:2)-valores, pero
that does not mean that the antecedent itself is provided with a formal gender feature (in pronominal
gender languages; in n-gender languages, it often is). See the discussion around the English noun
girl and the structure in (17) abajo.

Gender assignment in pronominal gender languages is evidently always semantic/pragmatic,
based on knowledge and presuppositions about the world (one such presupposition being that
regular names like Mary and John refer to a female vs. a male). Consider the examples in
(12)–(13), dónde (13a–b) are understood as being stated without any previous mention of the
persons referred to.

(12) a. Clintoni campaigned hard, but shei lost in the end.
b. Clintoni campaigned hard, and hei won in the end.

(13) a. Look at this! She is strong!
b. Look at this! He is strong!

It is obvious that the antecedent Clinton in (12a–b) is not an unambiguous source of gender
assignment to the coreferential pronouns, she vs. él; en cambio, assignment is based on knowledge
or presuppositions about the individual referred to as Clinton.21 The deictic gender assignment
to the pronouns in (13a–b) is even more obviously unrelated to noun properties, instead being
based on speaker assumptions about the persons in question.

The gender of pronouns is obviously PF-lexical, but on the Minimalist atomic view of
grammatical features adopted here (as stated in section 1), it could not be presyntactically lexical
(see also Kratzer 1998); on this atomic view, complex feature bundles are built in syntax and not
spelled out as units until morphology/PF (the externalization component, where the bundles are
presumably stored as units, in relation to a phonological matrix; see Distributed Morphology
approaches as in, p.ej., Embick and Noyer 2007). Sin embargo, even though gender values (like other
(cid:2)-características) are not presyntactically given, Gender is syntactically present in some form; de lo contrario,
it could not be expressed CP-internally. The question is, in what form—there are reasons to doubt
that it is syntactically present with a specific gender value (as F, METRO, norte, etc.) until late in the

20 The relations between lexical semantics and gender assignment are mostly rather straightforward in pronominal
gender languages. In n-gender languages, in contrast, they can be intricate, a research field that I will not enter here, como
already stated (but see for example Audring’s (2009) detailed study of gender in Dutch, showing that individuation plays
a significant role, in addition to better-known gender correlates such as sex and animacy).

21 Alternativamente, one might want to assume that Clinton is three items, one of them being inherently feminine, uno
inherently masculine, and one neither (one might wish to use Clinton as a name for a bar or a house or a car or whatever).
Sin embargo, this is a costly approach, as the use and interpretation of the name Clinton requires world knowledge and
pragmatic context scanning in any case. Notice also that this would imply that the set or collection of animate nouns is
multiplied by the number of genders in pronominal gender languages as opposed to genderless languages and languages
with fixed n-genders.

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derivation. These specific values seem to be interpretations of a more abstract feature, a Gender
variable G(cid:4).

In pronominal gender languages (setting n-gender languages aside for the moment), Gender
is always dependent on the CP-external context, either pragmatic (as in (12)–(13)) or linguistic
(as in Maryi said that shei was happy). En otras palabras, CP-internal gender in such languages is
not assigned a specific value until the [CP . . . [DP . . . D/G(cid:4) . . . ] . . . ] structure meets its context,
as sketched simply in (14).22

(14) CONTEXT

[CP . . . [DP . . . D/G(cid:5) (cid:3) F/M/N, etc.. . . . ] . . . ]

Control/Context scanning

This is compatible with the common view that Gender is indexical in some sense (see Wechsler
and Zlatic´ 2003, Wechsler 2011, Landau 2016b, Ku?erova´ 2018), but I will not pursue the issue
aquí. D/G(cid:4) is an edge linker, with a context-linking capacity similar (albeit not identical) to that
of the TS and (cid:3)A features discussed in section 2. The context-linking approach thus generalizes
over context-sensitive grammatical categories, a novel insight.

Consider the simple cases of distant (cid:2)-valuation in (15), where I mark only the gender

valuation.

(15) a. The girli said that DPi was happy.

b. We bought the booki. DPi was good.

DPi (cid:5) DPi/F (cid:4) she in PF
DPi (cid:5) DPi/N (cid:4) it in PF

Distant (cid:2)-valuation is commonly referred to as agreement in the Gender literature and taken to
be the lowest-ranked or weakest sort of agreement in the Agreement Hierarchy, postulated by
Corbett (1979) and adopted in much related research. Sin embargo, even though distant (cid:2)-valuation
across CP-boundaries involves “agreement” in some general, unspecific sense, it expresses another
type of relation than is seen in more local agreement phenomena, such as subject-predicate agree-
ment and DP-internal agreement or concord: it does not involve syntactic Agree, whereby a probe
searches for a relation with a goal within its c-command domain (Chomsky 2001).

In pronominal gender languages, Gender is always interpretable (in the sense of Chomsky
1995). In n-gender languages, por otro lado, pronominal gender may or may not be interpreta-
ble. It is interpretable when a pronoun refers to an antecedent with semantic gender, as in Icelandic
Stelpani . . . Hu´ni ‘The girl.F . . . She.F’, but it is uninterpretable when the antecedent does not
have any animate gender semantics, as in Icelandic Bo´kini . . . Hu´ni . . . ‘The book.F . . . “She”.F
((cid:4) ‘it’)'. In the latter case, the pronoun itself is interpretable, but its F gender feature is not. En
Chomsky’s Minimalist Program (1995, 2001, etc.), uninterpretable formal features are deleted
under transfer to the semantic/pragmatic interface, C-I, by entering an Agree relation in syntax.
If we were to analyze the uninterpretable gender feature of pronouns in cases such as Bo´kinii . . .
Hu´ni . . . ‘The book.F . . . “She”.F ((cid:4) ‘it’)’ as being deleted by virtue of entering an agreement
or an Agree relation with its antecedent, we would have to extend the notion of Agree beyond
syntax, such that it applies across CP-boundaries, often many of them (see the next section). Él

22 As will be discussed in section 4, this applies generally to pronominal gender, also in n-gender languages.

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is unclear how such a relation could be defined and constrained so as to make the correct predic-
ciones (when and how it applies, when it does not, etcétera). Plainly, distant (cid:2)-valuation is not a
narrowly syntactic process, although it can access syntax, as sketched in (14). I will address dis-
tante (cid:2)-valuation in more detail in section 5, arguing that it involves recycling under nonsyntactic
and nonlocal context scanning plus syntactic and local edge computation.

To make the issues at stake clearer, in the following sections I will take a closer look at the

relation among n-gender, D-gender, and DP-gender, and also at formal vs. semantic gender.

4 n-Gender, D-Gender, DP-Gender

In languages with n-gender, a formal gender feature is assigned to the n-edge—for example, n/
GM (masculine). This is sketched in the (simplified) structure in (16) for German masculine der
Mond ‘the moon.M’, donde el (so far unvalued) D-gender feature probes the n-edge for a value.
(Def (cid:4) definite)

(16)

DPM/*F/*N

D-edge
Def . . . D/G(cid:5)(cid:3)METRO . . .

nP

n-edge
. . . n/GM . . .

√MOND ‘moon’

Notice, in passing, that there seems to be a commonly unnoticed typological gap in observed
Gender systems: there are D-gender languages without n-gender, but not the other way around,
as far as can be judged from the extensive Gender literature (p.ej., Corbett 1991, Audring 2008,
2009, Kramer 2015). Call this the ( putative) D- over n-gender universal. It falls out naturally if
the primary function of Gender is to contribute to context linking via D and DP.

As shown, the D/n-gender value projects to DP in (16). Este, entonces, is the relation between
n-gender and D(PAG)-gender within inanimate noun DPs in n-gender languages. Such DPs have no
access to gender semantics, either from the noun root or from the context; de este modo, the only way of
assigning gender to them is to project their formal D/n-gender value to DP (perhaps as part of
labeling; Ku?erova´ 2018).23 The value of the gender feature in cases of this sort is commonly
idiosyncratic/idiomatic. Icelandic tungl is neuter, Icelandic ma´ni masculine (like its German
cognate Mond), Italian luna feminine, all meaning ‘moon’. Nouns of this sort obviously have no
gender semantics.

The gender of noun DPs enters two other types of relations, one DP-internal and one DP-
externo. The DP-external one relates DPs with pronouns (y viceversa), as we have already
seen for Icelandic Bo´kini . . . Hu´ni . . . ‘The book.F . . . “She”.F ((cid:4) ‘it’)', and also with predicates,
an issue I will return to shortly. The DP-internal relation in question is lexically semantic, seen

23 In normal language use. For important nickname exceptions, see below.

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G E N D E R A T T H E E D G E

737

for naturally gendered nouns like the above-mentioned Icelandic stelpan ‘the girl.F’, which has
both a formal D/n-gender feature and a lexically semantic gender interpretation. Access to lexical
gender semantics in naturally gendered nouns is independent of their having a formal gender
feature, as seen by the simple fact that it is available in languages that lack grammatical gender:
Finnish tytto¨ ‘girl’, poika ‘boy’; Hungarian la´ny ‘girl’, fiu´ ‘boy’; etcétera. As for pronominal
gender languages like English, one could possibly argue or believe that natural gender noun DPs,
such as the girl, have a D-gender feature like pronouns, albeit an invisible one (in contrast to the
visible D-gender in Italian il/la chirurgo ‘the.M/ F surgeon’, discussed in section 3). I assume
instead that all noun DPs in pronominal gender languages like English lack D-gender as well as
n-gender. Eso es, I adopt the analysis in (17) for English the girl.

(17)

DP

Pragmatic/Semantic gender inference (she)

D-edge
Def . . .

nP

Semantic access (femenino)

n-edge

√GIRL
[femenino]

The reason why I adopt this analysis is not the invisibility of a putative D-gender feature per se.
Bastante, access to lexical gender semantics in naturally gendered nouns seems to be universally
disponible (Corbett 1991), so postulating an invisible D-gender feature here would be an unneces-
sary extra stipulation. A diferencia de, English third person singular pronouns do have D-gender.
Reference to the girl, across CP-boundaries, by the pronoun she, involves pragmatic/semantic
inference under context scanning, as sketched in (14) y (17), plus edge computation via the
pronominal D-edge gender linker (mira la sección 5).

En algunos casos, nouns with natural gender semantics are assigned some “unnatural” formal
género. One example is Icelandic masculine kvenmaLur ‘woman.M’; another is the much-discussed
German neuter Ma¨dchen ‘girl.N’. This is illustrated in (18).

(18)

DP(norte)

D-edge
Def . . . D/G(cid:5)(cid:3)norte . . .

nP

n-edge
. . . n/GN . . .

√MÄDCHEN ‘girl’
[femenino]

In cases like this, the n-edge is idiosyncratically assigned some idiomatic gender (as in the case
of inanimate nouns like Mond in (16)).

As indicated, the projection of the formal D/n-gender value to DP is only optional in (18).
Hybrid nouns like Ma¨dchen may be referred to in discourse either with pronouns that pick up

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their formal D/n-gender or with pronouns that pick up their natural gender. En otras palabras,
Ma¨dchen may be referred to either as es ‘it’ or as sie ‘she’. Notablemente, it may be referred to with
the feminine pronoun even though its definite article in the D-domain obligatorily takes the neuter
form das, and not the feminine form die, as illustrated in (19).

(19) . . . [das/*die Ma¨dchen]i . . . Siei/Esi . . .

I assume that the female interpretation of the DP here (reflected by sie) is due to access to lexical
semantics plus postsyntactic semantic/pragmatic inference, as illustrated for the English noun
girl in (17) (the formal neuter gender of Ma¨dchen then not projecting to DP). A parallel optionality
is observed for number in some languages, including varieties of English, as illustrated in (20).

(20) a. This government has/have approved the measure.

b. *These government has/have approved the measure.

Either the formal singular feature of this government in (20a) projects to DP, triggering singular
agreement, or it does not, in which case semantic/pragmatic plural agreement may step in (ver
Herrero 2017). Just like the German article das in (19), demonstrative this, also a D-domain category,
must heed formal DP-internal agreement (in accordance with Corbett’s (1979) Agreement Hier-
archy), hence the ungrammaticality of these in (20b) and of die in (19).

Postsyntactic semantic/pragmatic gender inference is also commonly available for animate
nouns that lack inherent gender semantics and may thus refer to individuals regardless of biological
género: doctor, minister, hero, poeta, dog, horse, etcétera (p.ej., Corbett 1991). This is generally
the case in pronominal gender languages, but it also holds true of many n-gender languages,
despite the formal gender of most such nouns in n-gender languages. Some Icelandic examples
are given in (21). The label formal refers to formal D/n-gender (and not to formality, even though
D/n-gender reference to nouns of this sort is often rather formal in a communicative/social sense).
The boldfaced suffix is the definite article.24

(21)

a. L+knirinn . . .
doctor.the.Mi

b. Hetjan . . .
hero.the.Fi

Formal
Hann . . .
“he”i
Hu´n . . .
“she”i

Semántico
Hann/Hu´n . . .
hei/shei
Hann/Hu´n . . .
hei/shei

Impossible
*ÏaL . . .
iti
*ÏaL . . .
iti

24 As discussed by Sauerland (2008), Spathas (2010), and Percus (2011) (and as pointed out by a reviewer), el
genders are not always “even,” masculine for example commonly being less marked than feminine. Como (21) suggests,
this is not the case for personal pronouns in Icelandic (nor is it for predicate agreement), but a similar effect is seen for
Icelandic quantifiers and indefinite pronouns, where for example masculine allir ‘everybody’ may refer either to males
only or to people in general, as opposed to feminine allar (only females) and neuter o¨ll (a specific group of both biological
genders but not people in general). See Ïo´rhallsdo´ttir 2015, FriLriksson 2017, mi. F. SigurLsson 2017, Ïorvaldsdo´ttir
2017. As stated in section 1, I am not concerned with factors of this sort. I suspect that this imbalance is pragmatic/
conventional (the LGBTQ movement is actually trying to change this in present-day Iceland), but I will not pursue the
issue here. This of course shows that the gender features are amenable to semantic/pragmatic interpretation, but it does
not imply that they are lexical in a presyntactic sense.

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C. Ska´ldiL . . .
poet.the.Ni

ÏaL . . .
“it”i

Hann/Hu´n . . .
hei/shei

Pronominal reference is syntactically accidental (Lasnik 1976) or free (Reinhart 1983, Grod-
zinsky and Reinhart 1993) in the sense that it is independent of narrowly CP-internal syntactic
propiedades (apart from the abstract edge linkers), but it is subject to context scanning and thus
context-bound, even in cases like (12)–(13). This is clearly seen in fixed gender reference to
inanimate noun DPs in n-gender languages. Consider the Icelandic facts in (22), illustrating a
crosslinguistically widespread and well-known pattern.

(22) a. Kaflinni . . .

b. Bo´kini . . .

Hanni

era
chapter.the.M.SG.NOM “he”.M.SG.NOM was
Hu´ ni
era
“she”.F. SG.NOM was
ÏaLi
era
era
it.N.SG.NOM

book.the.F.SG.NOM

paper.the.N.SG.NOM
‘The chapter/book/(noticias)paper . . . It was new.’

ny´r.
new.M.SG.NOM
ny´.
new.F.SG.NOM
ny´tt.
new.N.SG.NOM

C. BlaLiLi . . .

Any forms other than those shown in (22) are excluded under the intended coreference (regular
Icelandic adjectives, such as ny´- ‘new’, tener 13 distinct forms in the simple indefinite positive).
The structure I assume for inanimate noun DPs was given in (16) for German der Mond ‘the
moon’. Por conveniencia, I repeat it for feminine Icelandic bo´kin ‘the book’ in (23).

(23)

DPF/*M/*N

D-edge
Def . . . D/G(cid:5)(cid:3)F . . .

nP

n-edge
. . . n/GF . . .

√BÓK ‘book’

In subsequent discourse, as in (22), el (cid:2)-values of the DP are picked up by a pronoun under
context scanning.

I will discuss context scanning shortly. Primero, aunque, recall that the specific gender value
of pronouns, as in (22), is assigned late in the derivation. Eso es, their abstract D-edge gender
linker cannot receive a specific gender value until the [CP . . . [DP . . . D/G(cid:4) . . . ] . . . ] estructura
containing the pronoun meets its context, as plainly seen in (22) and sketched in (14). Cuando el
D-gender of the pronoun and its other (cid:2)-features have been assigned specific values, they trigger
regular overt CP-internal predicate agreement, as in (22). Eso es, abstract CP-internal Agree
builds an agreement path between the subject and the predicate, DP(cid:2) . . . PRED(cid:2), and when the
(cid:2)-values of the subject have been specified, under context scanning and edge computation, ellos
percolate down to the predicate (for similar approaches to agreement, see H. A´ . SigurLsson 1989:
114–118, mi. F. SigurLsson 2017, Ku?erova´ 2018). The percolation of the specified or valued

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características (in contrast to abstract Agree) is presumably a PF process (see Landau 2016a and the
references there). Overt agreement reflects the PF resources a language has at its disposal, pero
seems plausible that even languages that lack such means, largely (like English) or completely
(like Mandarin), have abstract syntactic Agree.

This applies to pronouns. Full DPs also trigger predicate agreement, as well as DP-internal
agreement (concord), as in for example Icelandic Bo´k-in var ny´ ‘book.F.SG.NOM-the.F.SG.NOM was
new.F.SG.NOM’. En este caso, el (cid:2)-specification of both n and D, as well as that of the subject
DP as a whole, is independent of context. Sin embargo, it seems plausible that both the concord
and the predicate agreement paths involve only abstract Agree in syntax ( prior to (cid:2)-specification),
the overt (cid:2)-percolation not taking place until the externalization process. En ese caso, the n-√ROOT
relation must be visible to PF at the CP/DP levels (like lexical information in general).

This applies to formal (cid:2)-specification in examples like ‘the book was new’. A closer look
suggests that the gender interpretation of a DP is generally delayed until it meets its context (el
delay applying not only to pronouns but also to full DPs). The evidence that suggests this is well-
known for noun DPs like the doctor (with animate nouns that can refer to individuals regardless
of biological gender), a saber, the availability of semantic agreement for such DPs. A few Icelandic
examples are given in (24). The phenomenon is crosslinguistically familiar and has been widely
discussed in the Gender literature, by Corbett (1991) y otros. For more (attested) Icelandic
examples of this sort, see FriLriksson 2017, mi. F. SigurLsson 2017 (and for a general discussion
in terms of the Agreement Hierarchy, see Corbett 1979, 1991, 2006).

(24) a. L+knirinn

var mjo¨g h+fur/h+f.

doctor.the.M was very competent.M/F
‘The doctor was very competent.’

b. Hetjan

var mjo¨g hugro¨kk/hugrakkur.

hero.the.F was very brave.F/M
‘The hero was very brave.’

C. Ska´ldiL

var mjo¨g ungt/ungur/ung.

poet.the.N was very young.N/M/F
‘The poet was very young.’

The information that the individuals here referred to as ‘the doctor’, ‘the hero’, and ‘the poet’
have biological gender that contradicts the formal gender of the nouns is obviously based on
world knowledge or presuppositions, thus context-dependent. Much as for German das Ma¨dchen
‘the girl’, aunque (ver (19)), DP-internal concord must heed formal agreement (as shown by the
forms of the article in (24), -inn, -norte, -iL).25

There is actually commonly unnoticed evidence that this delay analysis extends to DPs in
general, even inanimate DPs. Inanimate (as well as animate) DPs can freely be used as nicknames
for persons: English The Hammer, etcétera (and similar DPs can be used as regular proper

25 This is the crosslinguistically common pattern, in contrast to the exceptional Icelandic and Russian DP-internal

D/n-gender schisms, mentioned in section 3.

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741

names in some cultures). A DP such as Icelandic feminine litla o¨xin ‘small.F ax.the.F’ is usually
used to refer to just ‘the small ax’, then triggering obligatory feminine agreement (as in ‘The
small ax was sharp.F’), but it can also be used as a nickname. In case the biological gender of
the person in question contradicts the formal gender of the DP, semantic predicate agreement is
disponible (and commonly preferable to formal agreement): Litla O¨ xin var reiLur ‘small.F ax.the.F
was angry.M’ (‘The Small Ax was angry’). Generalizing, the simplest analysis is that the gender
interpretation of a DP as a whole is always delayed until the DP meets its context, even when
there are no visible effects of the delay, as in the normal use of inanimate DPs, suggesting that
even such DPs are checked against their context prior to final gender interpretation of the DP as
a whole.26 Like the putative D- over n-gender universal, mentioned at the beginning of this section,
this falls out naturally if the primary function of Gender is to contribute to context linking.

Context scanning is not part of narrow CP syntax, but it serves to link CP syntax to the
linguistic and deictic context. The restrictions on it are mostly pragmatic and not easy to pin
abajo (ver, p.ej., Rohde, Kehler, and Elman 2006), but it is powerful, as examples like the Icelandic
(25) indicate.

(25) Bo´kini/F hafLi veriL niLri ı´ kjallara heima hja´ foreldrum mı´num ı´ mo¨rg a´r. En e´g hafLi
veriL upptekinn og margt hafLi komiL upp a´. Pabbi do´ og e´g fluttist ı´ annan b+ og
so´tti um og fe´kk ny´tt starf. En allt ı´ einu, einn go´Lan veLurdag ı´ no´vember, fo´r e´g aL
hugsa um hanai (*hanni/*ÈaLi) og a´kvaL aL na´ ı´ hanai (*hanni/*ÈaLi).
Apenas: ‘The booki/F had been in the cellar at my parents’ for many years. Sin embargo,
I had been busy, and a lot of things had come between. Dad died, and I moved to
another town and applied for and got a new job. But all of a sudden, one nice day last
Noviembre, I began thinking about “her”i (*“him”i/*“it”i) and decided to pick “her”i
(*“him”i/*“it”i) up.’

As clearly seen here, distant (cid:2)-valuation is trivially CP-accidental in the sense that the (cid:2)-valuation
of pronouns (in contrast to their case marking; see shortly) is not based on CP-internal grammar
(apart from the edge linkers; mira la sección 5). A diferencia de, it is not context-accidental or context-
gratis, and it also has CP-internal effects. Primero, it triggers overt (cid:2)-marking of the pronoun itself.
Segundo, as seen in (22), el (cid:2)-values of the pronoun trigger CP-internal agreement (in languages
that have such agreement).

There are two sides to the coreference and the form of the pronoun hana “her” in (25). Primero,
the pronoun links to the (cid:2)-values of its antecedent under context scanning. The linking is context-
bound but it is syntactically unbounded (“free”). Segundo, sin embargo, the context-bound (cid:2)-valores
are computed in relation to local case, the computation yielding the 3SG.F.ACC form hana. Este
computation, I claim, is syntactic, taking place at the edge of the DP phase containing the pronoun.
I take a closer look at this in the next section.

26 As mentioned in section 1, this contradicts Ku?erova´’s (2018) central claim that formally gendered DPs are spelled
out prior to C-I transfer or C-I access. The facts in (21) y (24) do so as well, and that also applies to parallel and
widely discussed facts in many other gender languages (ver, p.ej., Corbett 1991).

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5 Edge Computation of (cid:2)/Case

Context-dependent (cid:2)-values of a pronoun are incorporated into the DP containing the pronoun
(regardless of whether it has formally or semantically gendered antecedents). When two or more
antecedents are involved, this is usually referred to as resolution (Corbett 1991, 2006). Es un
composite phenomenon, consisting of both feature recycling under context scanning and computa-
ción, thus involving more than just plain copying. Icelandic offers clear data here, as it makes
gender distinctions in plural as well as singular third person pronouns (in contrast to many related
gender languages). The general Icelandic gender/number resolution pattern is shown in (26).27

(26) Icelandic third person gender/number resolution
Èeir ‘they’
Èær ‘they’
Èau ‘they’

a. All antecedents are M (cid:5) M.PL
b. All antecedents are F (cid:5) F.PL
C. All other combinations (cid:5) N.PL

Two examples with split antecedents are given in (27).28

(27) a. Jo´ni var bro´Lir Marı´uj og fr+ndi Rutark, en fjo¨lskyldan var sto´r og
John was brother Mary’s and cousin Ruth’s but family.the was big and
[CP È+rj(cid:5)k

ekki na´nar].

voru

they.F.PL.NOM were.3PL not close.F.PL.NOM

‘John was Mary’s brother and Ruth’s cousin, but the family was big and they.F
(Mary and Ruth) were not close.’

b. Marı´ai var systir Jo´nsj og fr+nka Pe´tursk, en fjo¨lskyldan var sto´r og
Mary was sister John’s and cousin Peter’s but family.the was big and
[CP Èeirj(cid:5)k

ekki na´nir].

voru

they.M.PL.NOM were.3PL not close.M.PL.NOM

‘Mary was John’s sister and Peter’s cousin, but the family was big and they.M (John
and Peter) were not close.’

The case of the pronouns (here nominative) is of course assigned CP-internally, regardless of
contexto. The pronominal forms thus combine (cid:2)-values from outside the CP with case from inside
él. To accomplish this, the grammar must compute clause-internal case in relation to recycled and
incorporated (cid:2)-valores, by edge computation. Consider the resolution in (27a), sketched in (28).

(28) . . . [DP [Mary’s]j brother] . . . [DP [Ruth’s]k cousin] . . . [CP . . . [TP [DP . . . ellos]F/j(cid:5)k

. . . ]]

27 Gender/number resolution shows some variation across and within languages, which I set aside here (but see

Wechsler 2009; also FriLjo´nsson 1991, Maru’i?, Nevins, and Badecker 2015, mi. F. SigurLsson 2017).

28 It is important that the antecedents are split (es decir., do not form a single constituent, as in coordination), as it excludes

analyses in terms of movement (on standard assumptions). For such an analysis, sin embargo, see Kayne 2002.

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Not only are the antecedents split, they are also embedded as possessive genitives in their DPs,
thus not c-commanding out of their DPs on standard assumptions. The resolution is thus based
on semantic/pragmatic inference, and not on structural syntactic relations, despite the formal n-
gender of Icelandic names (cf. also the examples in (22) y (25)).29 Sin embargo, el (cid:2)-valores
yielding [DP . . . ellos]F/j(cid:3)k are syntactically activated or recycled within the CP containing the
pronoun. This is simply illustrated in (29), where case is shorthand for the mechanism that
underlies the relevant case marking.30

(29)

. . . (cid:2) . . . (cid:2) . . . [CP . . .

Edge computation
[DP(cid:2)(cid:4)(cid:2)(cid:3)caso . . .

] . . . caso . . . ]

Recycling
under context scanning

As we have seen, el (cid:2)/case-values of the D-edge usually project to the DP, from which position
they trigger agreement under c-command at the clausal level (of verbs, predicates, etc.). In full
DPs, the D-edge (cid:2)/case-values normally trigger DP-internal agreement/concord, also under c-
command.31 This is sketched for a subject DP in (30).

(30)

CP

C-edge

TP

DP(cid:2)/caso

Agreement

D-edge
. . . (cid:2)/caso . . .

Agreement (concord)

Edge computation of (cid:2)/case is also at work in [DP PRO], as illustrated for Icelandic in (31),
where the nominative and (cid:2)-valued [DP PRO](cid:2)/NOM triggers regular (cid:2)/case-agreement of the
infinitival predicate. Notice that the matrix subjects are quirky subjects (nonnominative), hence
incapable of triggering (cid:2)/case-agreement (see further below). Eso es, even though the (cid:2)-valores

29 This is therefore additional evidence that the final gender interpretation of a DP is delayed until it meets its context.
30 Alternativamente, one might want to assume that the (cid:2)-computation as such takes place in the C-edge, con el
outcome (F.PL in (28)) being assigned to the D-edge under Agree, el (cid:2)/case-computation in turn taking place in the D-
borde (complementizer agreement in West Germanic varieties (see Haegeman and Van Koppen 2012) might suggest that).
The incorporated (cid:2)-values also enter CP-internal Person and Number computation/licensing, but I abstract away from
eso.

31 “Usually” and “normally.” This is the common pattern, but there are D/n-gender schism as well as semantic

agreement exceptions, as already discussed.

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come from outside the infinitival CP, the agreement is locally triggered by (cid:2)-valued nominative
PRO (see H. A´ . SigurLsson 2008 and the references there).32

(31) a. Hanai

her.ACC

b. Hanni

him.ACC

C. Ï+ri

langaLi
longed.3SG
langaLi
longed.3SG
langaLi

[CP aL [DP PRO]i verLa

C

C

[CP aL [DP PRO]i verLa

[CP aL [DP PRO]i verLa

them.F.ACC longed.3SG

C

d. Ïa´i

langaLi

[CP aL [DP PRO]i verLa

them.M.ACC longed.3SG
‘She/He/They/F/They/M wanted to get rich.’

C

rı´k].33
become rich.F.SG.NOM
rı´kur].
become rich.M.SG.NOM
rı´kar].
become rich.F.PL.NOM
rı´kir].
become rich.M.PL.NOM

Icelandic adjectives (in the indefinite positive) tener 24 case/number/gender combinations (4 (cid:6)
2 (cid:6) 3), expressed by 13 distinct forms, but any forms other than those given in (31) are ungrammat-
ical under the intended coreference.34

In the case of speaker-inclusive PRO, the pragmatic gender interpretation of the speaker is

activated in the infinitival CP, as partly illustrated in (32).35

(32) a. Ïa´

var gott

(fyrir migi) [CP aL [DP PRO]i vera svona rı´k].

then was good.N.SG (for me)
rich.F.SG.NOM
C
[“Mary” speaking about herself:] ‘Then it was good (for me) to be so rich.’

ser

entonces

b. Ïa´

var gott

(fyrir okkuri) [CP aL [DP PRO]i vera svona rı´kar].

then was good.N.SG (for us)
[“Mary” speaking about herself and some other female(s):] ‘Then it was good (para
a nosotros) to be so rich.’

rich.F.PL.NOM

ser

entonces

C

A parallel analysis applies to generic/arbitrary PRO, assigned M.SG in Icelandic (like impersonal
maLur ‘one’, accusative mann).

(33) Ïa´

var gott

(fyrir manni)

[CP aL [DP PRO]i vera rı´kur].

then was good.N.SG (for one.M.SG.ACC)
‘Then it was good (for one) to be rich.’

C

ser

rich.M.SG.NOM

On a lexicalist approach to (cid:2)-bundles, one might perhaps want to assume that there are as many
lexical (cid:2)/case-bundled PROs as there are (cid:2)/case combinations in a language. In Icelandic, el
number would be 72: 2 numbers (cid:6) 3 persons (cid:6) 3 genders (cid:6) 4 casos (4 cases as Icelandic has
quirky subjects, including quirky PRO). I discard this without discussion. Sin embargo, two other

32 In passing, notice that this is an additional reason for abstaining from referring to distant (cid:2)-valuation across CPs

as “agreement.”

33 The marker aL ‘that; to’ is standardly assumed to be in C in Icelandic control infinitives (which have infinitive

verb raising to T).

34 For most speakers and most examples; some speakers accept transmission of matrix ACC (mainly object ACC rather

than subject ACC) into some infinitives (by top-down PF case agreement); see H. A´ . SigurLsson 2008.

35 The same applies to hearer gender of hearer-inclusive PRO (es decir., PRO behaves like an overt pronoun with respect

to gender (and other (cid:2)-características)).

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conceivable alternatives need to be excluded here: eso (cid:2)/case-interpretation of PRO is free or
that predicate agreement is free.

El (cid:2)/case-interpretation of PRO is not free. Primero, el (cid:2)-interpretation is obligatorily the
same as that of the matrix controller of PRO, as seen in (31) y (34). Segundo, PRO is normally
assigned case from within the PRO infinitive, as seen by agreement, including regular predicate
agreement and floating quantifier agreement. This is illustrated in (34) (adapted from H. A´ .
SigurLsson 2008:410; DFT (cid:4) a default nonagreeing form).

(34) a. Br+Lrunumi

lı´kaLi

illa [aL [PRO]i vera ekki ba´Liri

brothers.the.M.PL.DAT liked.DFT ill
kosnir].
elected.M.PL.NOM
‘The brothers disliked not being both elected.’

a [NOM] ser

not both.M.PL.NOM

b. Br+Lurniri

+sktu

Èess [aL [PRO]i vera ba´Lumi

brothers.the.M.PL.NOM wished(para).3PL it
boLiL].
invited.DFT
‘The brothers wished to be both invited.’

a [DAT] ser

both.M.PL.DAT

The participle kosnir ‘elected’ in (34a) is a regular nominative-taking predicate, hence the NOM
of both the PRO–ba´Lir chain and the predicate itself—despite the DAT of the matrix controller
and the default nonagreement of the matrix verb. A diferencia de, the participle boLiL ‘invited’ in
(34b) is a quirky dative-taking predicate, hence the DAT of the PRO–ba´Lum chain and the default
form of the predicate itself—despite the NOM of the matrix controller and the agreement of the
matrix verb. In both infinitives, the agreement facts are the same as in the corresponding finite
clausulas (BræLurnir.NOM voru ekki ba´Lir kosnir vs. BræLrunum.DAT var ba´Lum boLiL). Estos
patterns are entirely general.

Predicate agreement is not free either. As seen in (34), it is strictly regulated or preconditioned
by local case. Nominative subjects, including PRO, trigger obligatory agreement of adjectival and
participial primary predicates, while nonnominative (quirky) subjects never do, instead requiring a
nonagreeing default form, such as boLiL ‘invited’ in (34b). We need not go into further detail
aquí; these facts have been repeatedly and extensively established in the voluminous literature
on Icelandic agreement (ver, p.ej., h. A´ . SigurLsson 1989, 2008, Thra´insson 2007, Bobaljik 2008,
Preminger 2014, mi. F. SigurLsson 2017, and the references cited in these works).

The case of PRO in the examples above is locally assigned within the PRO infinitive, mientras
es (cid:2)-values come from outside the infinitive. Under the present approach, the CP-external (cid:2)-
values are recycled in [DP PRO] and computed there under edge computation in relation to the
CP-internal case.

6 Summary

D-gender is a reflex of a D-edge linker, D/G(cid:4), assigned value in either of two ways: by DP-internal
probing for n-gender or by DP-external context scanning. While both strategies are available in

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n-gender languages, only the context-scanning strategy is applicable in pronominal gender lan-
calibres, such as English, as they lack n-gender. In D/n-gender languages, the formal D/n-gender
value usually projects to DP, from which position it enters distant (cid:2)-valuation correlations and
triggers gender agreement at the clausal level. In certain cases, sin embargo (for DPs with hybrid
nouns and the like), the D/n-gender need not project, the DP alternatively receiving semantic/
pragmatic gender interpretation under context scanning. Distant (cid:2)-valuation across CP-bounda-
ries, including resolution, involves feature recycling under context scanning plus edge computa-
ción, whereby the recycled and incorporated gender features are computed in relation to phase-
internal case. Like Person and Tense, Gender thus has both a contextual and a syntactic side to
él, linking syntax and context—at the edge.

En tono rimbombante, the present approach builds bridges between syntax and context, in terms of
context scanning and edge linking, and develops a theory of the fascinating phenomenon of edge
computation. It thereby develops a novel conception of the overall architecture of grammar as
well as contributing to a clearer understanding of Gender.

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SOL, Centre for Languages and Literature
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Box 201
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halldor.sigurdsson@nordlund.lu.se

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