Abstract

The German and Swedish systems of person denominations display fundamental differences. While in Swedish - similar to English - a systematic neutralization of sex has taken place (e.g. Swed. lärare 'male and female teacher'), German has moved in the opposite direction by applying sex-specifying splittings (der/die Lehrer/in). In its attempt at sex neutralization, Swedish has not only rigorously abolished the word formation suffixes of female person denominations, - ska and inna, respectively, but also neutralized both male denominations with-man and female denominations with -ska: köpman 'male and female merchant' - sjuksköterska 'female and male nurse'. The latter is a rather seldom phenomenon from a crosslinguistic perspective. Unlike English, Swedish still preserves a two-class gender system. German has even retained a three-class gender system. In this article, the synchronic and diachronic differences between Swedish and German person denominations are analyzed. In order to explain these, both language-intemal reasons (e.g. the complex grammatical gender, sex, and social gender) and language-extemal reasons (e.g. the different social and political conditions) are examined.