Research has predicted an uncertain future for gender and noun inflection in Northern Norwegian varieties. Gender is expected to disappear and the noun inflection system to undergo simplification. The driving force is said to be contact between Norwegian, a gender language, and Sámi and Kven, non-gender languages. On the basis of data from the Nordic Dialect Corpus, we argue that these predictions are not borne out. Gender is a stable category and noun inflection has divergent patterns. These

more »

... ndings are interpreted in light of the socio-historical background of language contact and shift characterising the region.