pronoun errors in gender

[Denis Donovan]

Hi Laura,

Just a few thoughts on the subject you have raised.

One of the problems with posing categorical problems is that they may, or may not, present quite the same challenges to practical understanding in different language worlds. In English, we can certainly refer to a city such as Paris, as Alistair Horne did in his marvelous history, SEVEN AGES OF PARIS, as a woman. And it is standard to refer to ships as feminine. No one would ever say of the Titanic "He sunk."

Whereas London, through the ages, has always betrayed clearly male orientations, and New York has a certain ambivalence, has any sensible person ever doubted that Paris is fundamentally a woman? It was thus that I first conceived this book--not as any arrogant attempt to write an all-embracing history of Paris, but rather as a series of linked biographical essays, depicting seven ages (capriciously selected at the whim of the author) in the long, exciting life of a sexy and beautiful, but also turbulent, troublesome and sometimes excessively violent woman (Horne :xiii).

Horne, Alistaire (2004). Seven Ages of Paris. New York: Vintage.

But languages that mark the gender of things other than people -- objects, places, concepts, etc. -- and those that typically do not present very different psychological or psycholinguistic challenges. You make this observation:

In my clinical experiences, I have seen many children with autism who make errors in pronoun gender, and many kids with language disorders (as well as younger, typically developing kids) who make errors in pronoun case (e.g., “her have it”).  I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a child make a pronoun gender error who did NOT have autism, but I’m having trouble finding anything in the literature to back up that blanket statement.

I've attached a clinical example from a book that I'm finishing up that does not fit your pattern. The example is a good 15 years old, although it won't be published until the book is completed shortly. Notice that the issue is both linguistically and clinically complex. Yet it's a not uncommon case.

Best,

Denis

Denis M. Donovan, M.D., M.Ed., F.A.P.S.
Director, EOCT Institute

Medical Director, 1983 - 2006
The Children's Center for Developmental Psychiatry
St. Petersburg, Florida

P.O Box 47576
St. Petersburg, FL 33743-7576
Phone:	727-641-8905
DenisDonovan at EOCT-Institute.org
dmdonovan1937 at gmail.com



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