Re: "Gender-free masculine pronoun"? Absurd. [was: Re: Crossposting [was: Re: Traditional gender-free "he" [was: Re: "16 and 276 are 292"? No. [was: Re: Lack of vocabulary in English?]]]]

From: Charles Riggs (chriggs_at_éircom.net)
Date: 03/13/05 

Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 05:42:33 +0000

On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 13:56:44 -0800, "Carmen L. Abruzzi"
<carmenlabruzzi@yahoo.com> wrote:

>> Jacques Guy wrote:

>>> Mind you, that ought to be refined. For the feminine 3rd
>>> person singular pronoun is also unmarked for sex when
>>> referring to inanimate objects (ship, car), and to some animals
>>> (cat, fox).
>
>This is not grammatical gender, it is anthropomorphizing. Cats and
>foxes are not normally referred to as "she", unless they are actually
>females. Ships and cars being referred to as "she" is an affectation,
>and not usual usage. That is, someone might speak of their own car,
>their pride and joy, as "she's a beauty", but the same person isn't
>going to say of a stalled car blocking the street, "when are they going
>to tow her away?".

As risky as it may be to disagree with Carmen, cats are normally
referred to as 'she' if their sex is unknown, as is often the case.
Ships, but not necessarily boats, are always referred to as 'she',
unless the speaker is a landlubber of the most landlocked variety. I
agree that cars, to which I'd add computers, are shes only in some
circumstances. I'd never call one of my own computers a 'he', though,
unless it was a crummy Dell I'd purchased in a weak moment. 

-- 
Charles Riggs
There are no accented letters in my email address

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