Gender conflicts in German possessives: comparing inanimate to human reference reveals asymmetries

Abstract Although German, as a grammatical gender language, requires noun–pronoun agreement in anaphora, exceptions to the rule occur, e.g., in possessive constructions when the gender-incongruent possessive pronoun sein (masculine/neuter, his/its) refers to feminine antecedents instead of congruent ihr (feminine, her). While this violation is merely grammatical for inanimate referents, it can provoke semantic mismatches for human possessors (especially gender-specific female nouns like die Hexe i – sein i (the witch – his/its), but less so with gender-indifferent human nouns, such as die Kontaktperson (the contact person). A self-paced reading (SPR) experiment tested the acceptability and processing of sentences in which incongruent sein referred to feminine possessors, which differed in animacy status (inanimate versus human). Introducing this agreement violation reduced acceptability and elevated reading and reaction times (RTs), but effects varied by antecedent animacy. These results suggest an animacy restriction in possessive reference and substantiate the impact of meaning-based gender cues on pronominalization.