This article presents an investigation of the ongoing change in grammatical gender in Norwegian dialects, specifically the dialect of Oslo. We find that the feminine indefinite article ei and the prenominal possessives mi/di/si have disappeared from the Oslo dialect, resulting in a two-gender system with common and neuter. While the feminine definite suffix -a and the postnominal possessives mi/di/si have been found in previous studies to be generally retained in other dialects, we find less use of these forms in Oslo. We argue that the erosion of these two forms is due to the loss of feminine gender, resulting in a common gender with two competing declension classes. We consider the theoretical status of these forms and argue that our empirical data is better explained within an analysis where definite suffixes are analysed as declension class markers and the postnominal possessive no longer expresses feminine gender.

In this paper, we investigate an ongoing change in the grammatical gender system of Norwegian. Previous research has shown that the feminine form of the indefinite article is quickly disappearing from several dialects, which has led to claims that the feminine gender is being lost from the language. We have carried out a study of the status of the feminine in possessives across five age groups of speakers of the Tromsø dialect. Our findings show that the prenominal possessives are affected by the change to the same extent as the indefinite article, while forms that have been argued not to be exponents of gender (the definite suffix and the postnominal possessive) are generally unaffected.