Grammatical gender is the sorting of nouns into classes, which reflects interpretable properties for some but not necessarily all of the nouns within a class, and which induces changes in agreement morphology on other elements (see Corbett 1991; Dahl 2000; Kramer 2015; relatedly Hockett 1958). Current research is split on the matter of whether grammatical gender is fundamentally a property of nouns, or is instead a property of nominal phrases, possibly whose position within nominal structure varies depending on whether gender is interpreted or not (e.g. Steripolo and Wiltschko 2010; Steriopolo 2018).

This project seeks to illuminate the formal vs. interpretable dichotomy of grammatical gender through the lens of nominal structure and feature mismatch. The current project focuses on cases in which there is mismatch between formal and interpretable gender, with special attention paid to how these types of gender manifest themselves both within a single nominal phrase as well as across two related nominal phrases (i.e. in apposition). This project will evaluate hypotheses about the connection between nominal structure and grammatical gender by employing a comprehensive set of tools that manipulate the amount of nominal structure present, to determine how formal vs. interpreted gender agreement is affected. Establishing the link between grammatical gender and nominal syntax is a crucial component to understanding how nominal expressions are constructed from formal and interpretable ingredients more generally and how these factor into agreement relations.