Re: Indo-European Languages and Gramatical Gender Loss

On 17 Jun, 08:43, "Paul J Kriha" <paul.nospam.kr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Seán O'Leathlóbhair <jwlaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1182014386.869277.20240@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On 16 Jun, 12:10, "Paul J Kriha" <paul.nospam.kr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Seán O'Leathlóbhair <jwlaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1181981164.578631.317700@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 16 Jun, 05:49, Xabi <jser...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 16, 4:31 am, "Richard Wordingham" <jrw0...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Xabi" <jser...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1181955867.430994.164180@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Jun 14, 7:19 pm, Seán O'Leathlóbhair <jwlaw...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Of course, some languages do not even distinguish "he" and "she".
There are even languages that do not distinguish the plural forms of "he"
and "she". Odd, isn't it?

<cut>

Useful? I dunno. That's, for example, how the most of the Slavic
languages do it. A single masculine in the group requires masculine
plural pronouns as well as masc. forms of adjectives and verbs
(if in the past tense). Usually, people who get used to it, do find
it useful.

Note that I am not suggesting that a language feature needs to be
useful, just that it may be interesting to see which ones are and
which ones are not. One way to judge usefulness is whether all or
most language have the feature. The more languages we consider, the
more fun this comparison can get. Gender gets discussed a lot in
Europe because we have a mix of languages which have it and don't have
it. The native English speakers tend to see it as a pointless
complication since they get along without it. However, most Europeans
would probably agree that plural forms are useful or even necessary
and may be quite surprised when they go to the Far East and find the
feature absent from many languages.

BTW, you keep saying "male" and "female". Aren't we talking
about non-Englishcentric grammatical gender, not sex?

True. It was the discussion of third person plural pronouns that
threw me off track.
These seemed most complicated when referring to
humans since the antecedent could be of mixed gender / sex.

Yes, but only in some languages. In languages with grammatical
gender largely independent of sex or human/non-human
antecedent the complications are caused by something else.

Inanimate
antecedents for a 3pp pronoun are probably likely to be of a common
gender. This renders some of my points in this area irrelevant.

Hm..., not really. In at least one in three European languages
(in my very rough ad-hoc estimation) the animation and gender
are orthogonal to each other and 3pp pronouns don't have
a common gender.

I think that
Richard is right and a contrast is not very likely, you would need to
be talking of two groups one which was all male and the other mixed or
all female. It seems rather less likely than talking of one man and
one woman and no help when you are talking of two mixed groups.

I suspect, the Slavic plurals are especially useful to female gossipers. :-)

What youse guys think about it?

<snip>

To avoid accusations of bias towards my native English, here is a non-
English pronoun distinction that I feel is useful. Bahasa
Indonesian / Malaysia distinguishes two forms of we: kita includes you
and kami excludes it. If I say to may wife "we are going out" it is
not clear if I am going with her or my mistress, it would be clearer
in Indonesian. Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_language

I can see these two "we"s can be quite useful. On the other hand
in English you can truthfully without blushing say to your wife:
"I really enjoyed the good time we had last Sunday" without
making her aware that the good time you had was with somebody
else. In English you can also talk at length about having spent time
with a friend or a boss without letting your wife know the friend's
or bosses sex.

A difficult trade-off. Again I am biased but I feel this lack of need
to label gender all over the place is a good feature of English. To
reduce the bias, I will admire Mandarin and several other Asian
languages for not even requiring marking of number and tense. Indicate
these aspects when required but not when unnecessary. As a
mathematician, I feel that Mandarin is one of the most attractive
grammars.

This lack of compulsory gender marking is useful in the modern world
when sexism is discouraged or forbidden.

I am sorry, but this is such nonsense.

OK, I am happy to be corrected (there's an example of me accepting a
correction by you above), no need to be rude.It was an anglocentric
remark. However, I would be interested to know how the issue is
handled in languages that conventionally mark gender in words such as
doctor. (At least those in which the gender usually corresponds to
the sex.)

In languages where nouns, adjectives and verbs are marked
for grammatical gender such marking is often unrelated to sex
of the referent. You must be terribly confused if you think that
that has anything to do with sexism.

For example,. you can
advertise for a doctor without implying a particular sex.

The implication exists only in the mind of a sexist.

Then why is so much effort expended on avoiding sexist language e.g.
use of he/she?

In the languages with the compulsory gender the position
advertised may be of masculine gender (e.g. doktor).
Either men or women can apply. The masculine gender
of the job position carries no sexist implications.
When you refer to a particular doctor, and if it is relevant,
you make the gender distinction goverened by the human's
sex.

The few
exceptions, e.g. actor / actress, seem to be dying.
I don't think
that many people would interpret actor as meaning male only.

You are again talking about English.


Actually, I was also thinking of examples such as doctor / doctora in
Spanish. I would be interested to know the Spanish feminist
viewpoint.

--
Seán O'Leathlóbhair

.

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