ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes intralinguistic motivations for a grammatical change in Wessex Vernacular English. These motivations will be used to explain why an earlier three-gender system for nouns in Wessex has been well preserved in those varieties of Newfoundland Vernacular English which have mainly Wessex origins, while change towards a two-gender system has taken place in the source area of Wessex itself in south-western England. The chapter explains some grammatical differences between two closely related lects of Modern English, Wessex and Newfoundland Vernacular English, in terms of how linguistic subsystems tend to support or undermine one another within a given lect. Henning Andersen has cogently argued that structural ambiguities can 'internally motivate' changes within the phonology of a lect. The chapter demonstrates that such ambiguities can also motivate changes within the morphology and syntax of a lect. It also explains a change in grammatical gender of nouns in Wessex English in terms of unobservable psychological realities.
