Gender Assignment of Ad-hoc-Borrowings A linguistic Study of Cuban Migrants in Berlin

The paper concentrates on the gender assignment of cultural ad-hoc-borrowings. Besides a theoretical contemplation, speech data which was raised by means of a questionnaire will serve to underpin the theorical supposition. The aim of the paper is to describe the language switch between the determiner and the noun produced by cuban immigrantes in Berlin. In the course of the paper the question will be followed which components influence the gender assignment. The results show that a speaker-and word-specific consideration is necessary. Against the initial assumption, the speaker's gender competence has a low influence on the gender assignment. The original gender of the borrowed word and its markedness is more significant.