Abstract
Welsh grammatical gender exhibits several unusual properties. This paper argues that these properties are necessarily connected. The argument is based on a series of corpus investigations using techniques from statistical natural language processing, specifically distinguishing properties that exhibit significant statistical patterns from those which can be used to make useable predictions. Specifically, it’s shown that the grammatical properties of Welsh gender are such that its unusual statistical properties follow.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to audiences in Tucson and Aberystwyth. Thanks also to Diane Ohala, Dalila Ayoun, Lionel Mathieu, several anonymous reviewers, and the editor for helpful feedback at various stages. All errors are my own.
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