Volume 57 (2026), Issue 1

If we look at the languages of the world, the development of gender systems follows a determined process of grammaticalization. This process usually proceeds from semantically to grammatically (formally) motivated gender systems. At the same time,...

Generic masculines are masculine nouns that can denote persons of any gender. In gender discourse, generic masculines such as Teilnehmer ‘participant’, which have a gender-specific meaning in addition to a generic meaning, are considered...

In German, the use of the suffix -:in to derive nouns denoting persons of any gender from grammatically masculine nouns (“gender motion”) has led to variation between non-derived and derived forms, particularly in contexts of generic reference....

Linguistic gendering, understood as making all genders visible (cf. Hirschberg 2021), constitutes a morphological operation, which will be illustrated below for nouns, articles/pronouns, and adjectives. Not only do individual speakers often lack...

In recent years, the development trends of gender-sensitive language use in German linguistics has been more and more examined by using empirical methods. In addition to psycholinguistic studies on the perception of personal nouns, the focus is...

In languages with grammatical gender systems like German, conflicts can arise between grammatical gender and gender association in pronominal references to human designations. An experimental study compared epicene, gender-nonspecific feminine forms...

In their seminal paper, Gygax et al. (2008) tested sentence pairs containing a masculine personal noun such as Sozialarbeiter ‘social workers’ in the first sentence, followed by a resumptive anaphor such as einige der Frauen/Männer ‘some of...

Language should be inclusive, meaning it is understandable for as many people as possible. To this end, the concept of easy-to-read language (Leichte Sprache, LS) was developed which notably benefits people with learning difficulties, among other...

The question which terms for person reference should count as genderfair has been controversially discussed for a long time. Hereinafter, the arguments that seem to be the most relevant will be reconstructed, systematized and discussed. Therefore, I...