The Teacher and the Frog: Unveiling the Morphosyntax of Gender Shifts in Czech with Nanosyntax

Abstract

This study examines the formation of nouns in Czech that show grammatical gender through stem morphemes and three productive suffixes: -a, -k-(a), and -ák. These suffixes are the main morphological exponents across three noun classes – monomorphemic (e.g. kmotr/kmotr-a), bimorphemic (učitel/učitel-k-a), and stem–suffix compounds (žáb-a/žab-ák). Using nanosyntax, the study shows that gender alternations arise from hierarchical syntactic structures rather than lexical or semantic defaults. By investigating noun pairs such as učitel (‘teacher.Masc’) / učitel-k-a (‘teacher.Fem’) and žáb-a (‘frog.FEM’) / žab-ák (‘frog.MASC’), the study shows that masculine forms contain Class and Masc, while feminine forms emerge through the addition of Fem. Suffixes such as -k-a and -ák function as lexicalization solutions, structured through movement-based operations. This approach refines our understanding of Czech gender morphology, demonstrating that nanosyntax captures gender alternations systematically even when surface forms are unpredictable. By modeling these alternations within a unified syntactic framework, the study provides a principled account of morphological derivation and paves the way for further cross-linguistic extensions.