The gender of nominal Anglicisms across language families and regions: A typological study

Research on Anglicisms has traditionally focussed on major European languages, leaving phylogenetically diverse languages underexplored. We aim to address this by adopting a cross-linguistic approach in which we examine the integration of English nouns, which lack inherent gender, into languages with grammatical gender, specifically those with a tripartite gender system. Our analysis includes a diverse sample of languages from Europe, the Indian Subcontinent, Africa, the Pacific, and North America. Our findings reveal that while most Anglicisms conform to established language-internal patterns, nominal Anglicisms exhibit unique characteristics within them. This study contributes to the ‘running experiment’ whereby borrowings are analysed to verify the gender systems of individual languages. By broadening the scope of research to include a wide range of under-studied languages and how they assign gender to nominal Anglicisms, we hope to enhance the understanding of Anglicism integration and contribute to the development of a global typology of Anglicisms.