Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
Mary Ellen Curtin
Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
Date:
Thu, 11 Feb 1999 13:48:26 -0500
From:
"Mary Ellen Curtin" <mecu...@alumni.Princeton.EDU>
To:
<as...@earthlink.net>
CC:
"T'Pat--Differently-humoured entity" <tpa...@yahoo.com>
Wracking my leaking memory and surfing the Web
gives the following information:
Indo-European gender (male/female/neuter) is a special
case of a more general phenomenon: noun classes.
Swahili, for instance, has 11 noun classes, none of
which correspond to "male" or "female". The Bantu
languages of Africa generally have noun class systems
that have been called "Indo-European gender on steroids";
I've heard of African languages with *28* classes.
Noun classes (including linguistic gender) reflect social
reality. Not all socially important distinctions are found
in noun classes, not by a long shot -- Japanese has no
linguistic gender, for instance. But no language even
begins to make the distinctions I outlined in my post on
Biological Gender, because they are socially unimportant.
As users of English, I feel we have considerable freedom
to do Whatever Works for Us. Since our noun class
system is a relic which only applied to pronouns, we can
easily make up pairs of words (nominative/accusative) to
reflect whatever social distinctions we feel are important.
As I've been thinking about this, I've realized that a lot of
English Pronoun Problems arise because we have inchoate
noun classes -- almost as though Bantu-type noun classes
are trying to break through the narrower structure of English.
So for instance, I think English-users feel the need for better
pronouns for:
a) persons of unknown/undefined sex
b) God
c) important tools (car, puter, ship, toaster)
d) nations
There's no need to buckle ourselves into a three-way
straightjacket, to say "everything must be he, she, or it."
That leads to absurdities like using "it" for a stallion or
"she" for a ship. We should be grateful that we're not
using a language like Italian, where you'd have to invent
articles as well as pronouns, much less French -- which has
that fun-loving group of jokers the Academie Francaise (aka
the Parisian branch of the King Canute School of
Oceanography).
I'll start by saying that I've weighed your valuable input and
decided I'm going to call persons of unknown/undefined sex
xe/hir.
May the best pronouns win.
Mary Ellen
Doctor Science, MA
- - - - - - - - -
Good Book of the Day:
"The Princess Bride," by S. Morgenstern;
Good Parts Version by William Goldman
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Interested in the ASCEM(L) Round Robin? There's still time!
Write to eres...@cyberg8t.com and ask to be put on the list!!
Posting to ASCEM is easy: send your messages to <as...@earthlink.net>
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/ASCEML
Speed...@aol.com
Re: [ASCEML] Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
Date:
Fri, 12 Feb 1999 09:35:12 EST
From:
Speed...@aol.com
To:
as...@EARTHLINK.NET
In a message dated 2/12/99 3:13:55 AM Eastern Standard Time,
mecu...@alumni.Princeton.EDU writes:
<< Swahili, for instance, has 11 noun classes, none of
which correspond to "male" or "female". The Bantu
languages of Africa generally have noun class systems
that have been called "Indo-European gender on steroids";
I've heard of African languages with *28* classes.
Noun classes (including linguistic gender) reflect social
reality. Not all socially important distinctions are found
in noun classes, not by a long shot -- Japanese has no
linguistic gender, for instance. But no language even
begins to make the distinctions I outlined in my post on
Biological Gender, because they are socially unimportant.
>>
Okay, I known I've said something on this topic, but the above reminds me of
one of my favorite authors (don't flinch), Michel Foucault. Oh no, and I'm
gonna have to quote him, too:
"This book [The Order of Things] first arose out of a passage of Borges, out
of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar
landmarks of my thought -- *our* thought, the thought that bears the stampof
our age and our geography - breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the
planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing
things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse
our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a
'certain Chinese encyclopaedia' in which it is written that 'animals are
divided into: (a) belonging to the Emporer, (b) emblambed, (c)tame, (d)
sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h)ncluded in the
present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very
fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher,
(n) that from a long way off look like flies.' In the wonderment of this
taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means
of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of
thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking
*that*."
Phew! Anyway, I try to think of our gender classifications in the same way we
think of those Chinese classifications above. They tell us only what *we*
consider important about ourselves; how we order our world. And nothing more
or less than that.
Sorry for the long wuote.
Speedo
Moiner
Re: Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
Date:
Fri, 12 Feb 1999 13:02:46 -0500
From:
moi...@iREMOVEMEo.com (Moiner)
Organization:
Illuminati Online
To:
alt-startrek-creati...@moderators.isc.org
Newsgroups:
alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated
References:
1
In article <alexas-ya02408000...@news.earthlink.net>, "Mary
Ellen Curtin" <mecu...@alumni.Princeton.EDU> wrote:
> Subject:
> Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
> Date:
> Thu, 11 Feb 1999 13:48:26 -0500
> From:
> "Mary Ellen Curtin" <mecu...@alumni.Princeton.EDU>
> To:
> <as...@earthlink.net>
> CC:
> "T'Pat--Differently-humoured entity" <tpa...@yahoo.com>
>
>
>
>
> Wracking my leaking memory and surfing the Web
> gives the following information:
>
> Indo-European gender (male/female/neuter) is a special
> case of a more general phenomenon: noun classes.
>
> Swahili, for instance, has 11 noun classes, none of
> which correspond to "male" or "female". The Bantu
> languages of Africa generally have noun class systems
> that have been called "Indo-European gender on steroids";
> I've heard of African languages with *28* classes.
>
> Noun classes (including linguistic gender) reflect social
> reality. Not all socially important distinctions are found
> in noun classes, not by a long shot -- Japanese has no
> linguistic gender, for instance. But no language even
> begins to make the distinctions I outlined in my post on
> Biological Gender, because they are socially unimportant.
>
> As users of English, I feel we have considerable freedom
> to do Whatever Works for Us. Since our noun class
> system is a relic which only applied to pronouns, we can
> easily make up pairs of words (nominative/accusative) to
> reflect whatever social distinctions we feel are important.
English nouns had gender in the same way that other Indo-
European ones did; we've just forgotten them, for the same
reason that we stopped using noun cases except with our
pronouns.
> As I've been thinking about this, I've realized that a lot of
> English Pronoun Problems arise because we have inchoate
> noun classes -- almost as though Bantu-type noun classes
> are trying to break through the narrower structure of English.
>
> So for instance, I think English-users feel the need for better
> pronouns for:
>
> a) persons of unknown/undefined sex
> b) God
> c) important tools (car, puter, ship, toaster)
> d) nations
>
> There's no need to buckle ourselves into a three-way
> straightjacket, to say "everything must be he, she, or it."
> That leads to absurdities like using "it" for a stallion or
> "she" for a ship.
We use neuters for things and for animals we don't care about;
no treksmutteer worth the name would call a stallion "it", LOL.
> I'll start by saying that I've weighed your valuable input and
> decided I'm going to call persons of unknown/undefined sex
> xe/hir.
>
> May the best pronouns win.
That's the nature of linguistic change-- an ongoing struggle
in which survival is *earned.* Good luck to you, and to me!
:-)
--
"What do you do when all your excuses are gone?"
Mary Ellen Curtin
Re: Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
Date:
<as...@earthlink.net>
CC:
"Arachnethe2" <Arach...@darmstadt.netsurf.de>
I was wondering if one of you native speakers of a
more heavily gendered language than English could
tell us whether/how it affects the way you think about
things.
Do feminine nouns seem more womanly? Do masculine
ones seem more virile? Are there words that you feel
have the wrong grammatical gender?
Does it bother people? Do people ever try to change the
gender of a word? Does the idea of making up gender-free
pronouns seem a particularly Anglophone looniness?
Research, always . . . well, you know the drill.
Mary Ellen
Doctor Science, MA
- - - - - - - - -
Good Book of the Day:
"Textual Poachers," by Henry Jenkins
Trillseekr
Re: Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
Date:
From:
trill...@aol.comsnlybs (Trillseekr)
Organization:
AOL http://www.aol.com
To:
<alt-startrek-creati...@moderators.isc.org>
Newsgroups:
alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated
References:
1
In article <alexas-ya02408000...@news.earthlink.net>, "Mary Ellen
Curtin" <mecu...@alumni.Princeton.EDU> writes:
> Are there words that you feel
>have the wrong grammatical gender?
>
>
Well, in German, for whatever reason, the word 'skirt' takes a masculine
article. I've never even found a German able to explain this to me. :>
Trilly
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Remember to vote in the '98 Golden Orgasms: http://www.blimpht.com/go98/
Send all voting forms to <go...@blimpht.com> and *NOT* the newsgroup!
Posting to ASCEM is easy: send your messages to <as...@earthlink.net>
To subscribe or unsubscribe to the mirror list, contact anne <asc...@aol.com>
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/ASCEML
Judygran
Re: Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
Date:
From:
judy...@aol.com (Judygran) alt-startrek-creative-erotica-moderated
<alt-startrek-creati...@moderators.isc.org>
Newsgroups:
alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated
References:
1
I think this is an assumption, not a conclusion or a scholarly finding:
>Noun classes (including linguistic gender) reflect social
> reality.
The noun classes in most living languages were formed so long ago, they really
can't tell us much about the societies that use those languages *now* (or even
hundreds of years ago, for that matter). Much more interesting, to my way of
thinking, is the work in socio-linguistics on the specific ways that
gendered-ness is embedded in and constructed by language. For example, in
Cairene colloquial Arabic, men and women learn to pronounce the velarized "t"
differently. Why? Those are the kinds of specifics that you need to know to
understand how gender is constructed through language.
I think this is more accurate:
> Not all socially important distinctions are found
> in noun classes
It would be hard to imagine a more heavily-gendered society than Victorian
England, yet the members of that society spoke a relatively non-gendered
language (English).
I spent five years living in another country in which I used a gendered
language for everyday speech, and I can testify that it did not affect my
experience of social reality in the least. The social reality of gender in that
society was definitely embedded in the language, but not in the abstractions of
noun classes.
Judith
Vana...@aol.com
Re: [ASCEML] Re: Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
Date:
Sun, 14 Feb 1999 11:39:02 EST
From:
Vana...@aol.com
To:
as...@earthlink.net
In einer eMail vom 14.02.1999 09:10:52, schreiben Sie:
> I was wondering if one of you native speakers of a
> more heavily gendered language than English could
> tell us whether/how it affects the way you think about
> things.
> Do feminine nouns seem more womanly? Do masculine
> ones seem more virile? Are there words that you feel
> have the wrong grammatical gender?
I have never though over it!!!!!
ok, let´s see, some things who are a she (sie) in German:
die Blume (the flower)
die Sonne (the sun)
die Wüste (the desert)
die Farbe (the color)
die Maske (the mask)
die Zeit (the time)
die Sprache (the language)
some things who are he (er) in German:
der Mond (the moon)
der Kampf (the battle)
der Sonnenschein (the sunshine)
der Schlag (the blow)
der Tisch (the table)
der Computer (the comuter)
der Fernseher (the television)
Now some who are neuter das (it):
das Tier (the animal)
das Haus (the house)
das Schiff (the ship)
das Auto (the car)
Do these sound male, female or neuter to you? I find it quite interesting,
that the sun is often assiciated with male power, and the moon with female
power, but in german the genders are the other way round. mmm .. wrong gender?
> Does it bother people? Do people ever try to change the
> gender of a word? Does the idea of making up gender-free
> pronouns seem a particularly Anglophone looniness?
I think it has not bothered me ... until now. I just have never thought about
it yet. Just have talked that way my whole life, you know?
> Research, always . . . well, you know the drill.
>
> Mary Ellen
> Doctor Science, MA
> - - - - - - - - -
Does that help your research?
always at service
Vanasati
Jeanita
Date:
From:
"Jeanita" <jea...@cpcug.org>
To:
alt-startrek-creati...@uunet.uu.net
Newsgroups:
alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated
References:
1
Mary Ellen Curtin <mecu...@alumni.Princeton.EDU> wrote in article
<alexas-ya02408000...@news.earthlink.net>...
> Subject:
> Re: Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
> Date:
> Sat, 13 Feb 1999 01:26:15 -0500
> From:
> "Mary Ellen Curtin" <mecu...@alumni.Princeton.EDU>
> To:
> "T'Pat--Differently-Humoured Entity" <tpa...@YAHOO.COM>,
> <as...@earthlink.net>
> CC:
> "Arachnethe2" <Arach...@darmstadt.netsurf.de>
>
> [snip of everything, mostly]
>
> Do feminine nouns seem more womanly? Do masculine
> ones seem more virile? Are there words that you feel
> have the wrong grammatical gender?
>
Boy am I grateful that you say smart things and ask
such smart questions. Muchly I have little idea of
gender in Swahili, but it's nice to ponder. See how
treksmut liberates the mind. :-)
Jeanita
T'Pat--Differently-Humoured Entity
Re: ASCEML - Re: Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
Date:
Mon, 15 Feb 1999 10:55:44 -0800 (PST)
From:
"T'Pat--Differently-Humoured Entity" <tpa...@yahoo.com>
To:
as...@earthlink.net
Mary Ellen wrote:
> I was wondering if one of you native speakers of a
> more heavily gendered language than English could
> tell us whether/how it affects the way you think about
> things.
It certainly does, Mary Ellen. Fact is, I do give names
to everything, and names come with a gender, in my language.
As I mentioned jokingly, my car and my favourite plants are both
female-gendered, while my Teddy bear is male (a gay one, at that
<vbg>), and so is my vacuum, Wrath.
Sometimes, I think English is a blessing, because most things
are described by mildly-gendered names at best.
Think of job descriptions, for instance.
I may be a 'hamburger-flipper' in English and no-one would know
or expect to know whether I am male or female or anything in between.
In my language, I would be a male OR female hamburger-flipper,
and it would be my physiological gender that would make the
decision for me.
[And I am using this silly example because some of my colleagues
just went off for lunch, and they are notoriously carnivorous ;-) ]
Come to think of it, I notice the difference most when I go back home.
When I am not, er, busy with my mate <vbg>, I am forced to pick up the
'correct' gender for myself, and get really annoyed for *having* to
do so. But more surprisingly still, I do tend to categorize in terms
of gender, once there. Despite myself. :-(
> Do feminine nouns seem more womanly? Do masculine
> ones seem more virile?
<throws up hands in give-up manner>
I have no clue as to what 'womanly' is. ;-)
I certainly know what 'virile' is (from Latin, 'relative to/about man',
which turned out to mean 'manly', of course), from which I can
infer what 'womanly' should be--yes, just playing along with
stereotypes, of course.
However, my definition of virile hardly depends on the linguistic
gender.
>Are there words that you feel have the wrong grammatical gender?
Collective nouns and pronouns. Italian uses male gender for both
(even when neuter, they still sound male). And I see no logic in
preferring male over female, when both are present, especially since
we already have cases and it would not be such a hassle to create
new ones.
But hey, that's just me. And I understand that Europe has now harder
troubles to overcome--like a commn language--I just wish we could
get a *fair* one when we get it ;-)
> Does it bother people? Do people ever try to change the
> gender of a word?
You mean attributing maleness/femaleness to something/body
just because their name is male/female?
It bothers me. Italy is an auld country. Auld values, that
go along with the males, traditionally. To put it simply,
male is going to be stronger, female is going to be more,
er, gentle. It's quite unconscious, but quite real.
Example: trucks have more often male names, because
they have to be sturdy, reliable, durable.
Sport cars have often female names, because it is pleasure
we are talking after all. And man's best destiny is with a
pleasant woman (no, slash is not popular), possibly a little
whimsical and dead-brained.
Beers are female, usually... and I'll need men to explain
this to me. Women are a drug? Help anyone?
You get where I am leading, at this point, don't you?
>Does the idea of making up gender-free
> pronouns seem a particularly Anglophone looniness?
I think most people are not even aware that there
may be a need for gender-free words.
My parents don't.
My best friends don't.
The discussion we have been having, and especially the
'you've got a gender, get used to it', in a way is not too
different from the ones I would have at home.
> Research, always . . . well, you know the drill.
Keep it up, Doc, we know indeed.
T'Pat--can't speak for Italian, can only say for thiss particular one.
==
`Different' is normal. Normal? Now, *that* is different. T'Pat
>:-j
_________________________________________________________
DO YOU YAHOO!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Remember to vote in the '98 Golden Orgasms:
http://www.blimpht.com/go98/
Send all voting forms to <go...@blimpht.com> and *NOT* the newsgroup!
Posting to ASCEM is easy: send your messages to <as...@earthlink.net>
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/ASCEML
J.Jon Kramer
Tue, 16 Feb 1999 15:21:17 -0800
From:
"J.Jon Kramer" <jo...@best.com>
Organization:
Organization? What organization?
To:
as...@earthlink.net
Subject:
Re: Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
Hello, Trilly,
I don't know if this helps, but I have heard several persons
of the male persuasion express the desire to be a bra. (Of
course, I have heard several female friends express the same
wish, for the same reason but from a non-het perspective.) I
would presume that there are plenty of het male Germans who
wouldn't mind being a skirt out of the same motives. Whether
this has anything to do with the language, I have no idea,
but I suspect that few here would find it surprising if it
did, given that statistically speaking there are more het
males than non-het females around to shape the language.
Juuuust trying to be helpful ;-)
cheers
jonk
Moiner
Re: Linguistic Gender ( was Re: Pronouns)
Wed, 17 Feb 1999 12:48:59 -0500
From:
moi...@iREMOVEMEo.com (Moiner)
Organization:
Illuminati Online
To:
Newsgroups:
alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated
References:
1
In article <36ca8a1f...@news.watervalley.net>,jo...@best.com t wrote:
> Hello, Trilly,
>
> I don't know if this helps, but I have heard several persons
> of the male persuasion express the desire to be a bra. (Of
> course, I have heard several female friends express the same
> wish, for the same reason but from a non-het perspective.) I
> would presume that there are plenty of het male Germans who
> wouldn't mind being a skirt out of the same motives. Whether
> this has anything to do with the language, I have no idea,
> but I suspect that few here would find it surprising if it
> did, given that statistically speaking there are more het
> males than non-het females around to shape the language.
>
> Juuuust trying to be helpful ;-)
>
> cheers
>
> jonk
As the poem says:
Would that I were a golden ring
upon my lady's hand;
then every time she wiped her arse
I'd see the Promised Land.
--
"What do you do when all your excuses are gone?"
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Remember to vote in the '98 Golden Orgasms: http://www.blimpht.com/go98/
Send all voting forms to <go...@blimpht.com> and *NOT* the newsgroup!
Posting to ASCEM is easy: send your messages to <as...@earthlink.net>
To subscribe or unsubscribe to the mirror list, contact anne <asc...@aol.com>
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/ASCEML