The effects of modality on gender agreement conflicts in German

Abstract

Hybrid nouns such as Mädchen (‘girl’) pose a challenge to agreement in German, as they combine neuter grammatical gender with the semantic feature [+female]. This study investigates how modality and structural factors shape the choice between grammatical and semantic agreement in pronominal reference. Building on earlier work, the analysis draws on a large corpus dataset from the German Web Corpus (deTenTen; n = 1,628), which contains conceptually oral online discourse. The results show that semantic agreement strongly dominates (88 %), with grammatical agreement persisting mainly in structurally bound positions (e.g., relative pronouns) and in contexts of immediate proximity between antecedent and target. On the one hand, these findings confirm the predictions of the agreement hierarchy; on the other hand, they underscore the relevance of modality: compared to norm-oriented written registers, conceptually oral registers favor semantic over grammatical agreement even more strongly. These results contribute to the understanding of how modality impacts linguistic choices and agreement resolution strategies.