Xhafer Beqiraj

Problems of Gender Accord of Two-gender Noun Determiners Xhafer Beqiraj

Research Paper from the year 2014 in the subject Speech Science / Linguistics, grade: Master & (PhD Candidat), University of Prishtina (ALG "Loyola Gymnasium" - Prizren), course: Linguistik - Albannian, language: English, comment: Scientific paper published in the book "Scientific Contributions of Prof. Rami Memushaj" Triptik, Vlorë, 2014. (In Albanian), abstract: Language phenomenon of two-gender (heterogeneous) nouns, which appears in some Indo-European languages, has for a long time drawn attention of linguists. This phenomenon appeared in languages such as: Italian, Romanian, Slovakian, Czech and Albanian, for e.g.: [...] In each of these languages, nouns of this category in singular are of masculine gender, but in plural they are transformed into feminine gender. This is known as two-gender phenomenon. Nouns which are classified into this category, denominate mainly non animated beings, things or abstract notions, such as: element-i element- (element) vend-i - vend-e (place), qytet-i - qytet-e (city(, kryeqytet-i - kryeqytet-e (capital city) breg-u - brigj-e ( hill), lloj-i - lloj-e (type), send-i - send-e (thing), djep-i - djepe (cradle), etc; vaji -vajra (oil), fshat-i -fshatra (village), debat-i - debat-e , drithë-i - drithëra ( corn) ujë-i - ujëra, ( water),lesh-i - leshra ( wool)), mall-i - mallra (goods), të qeshura (laughs) etc. In this category are also some nouns which denominate human beings, such as; personazh-personazhe (character), ekipazh-ekipazhe (crew), personalitet-personalitete (personality), ekip-ekipe (team), insekt-insekte (insect), bakter-baktere (bacteria), virus-viruse (virus), mikrob-mikrobe (microbe) etc. So in Albanian language two-gender nouns are those of masculine gender (a group of which primarily were of neuter gender) which form the plural by adding suffixes -e and -ra.