Pancake sentences and the semanticization of formal gender in Mainland Scandinavian
This paper focuses on two phenomena, a semanticization of the gender system that started in West Jutland, the southwestern part of Denmark, and so-called “pancake sentences” in Mainland Scandinavian (primarily Danish and Swedish). In West Jutlandic, substance-denoting nouns (as well as event nouns) are obligatorily constructed with a prenominal neuter element, primarily det, for example det mælk
