LL-L "Categories" 2002.09.16 (01) [A/D/E]

Mon Sep 16 18:30:38 UTC 2002

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From: Yana <niamh at kemtel.ru>
Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2002.09.15 (05) [E]

Hoi, allemaal!

   Mijn  naam  is Yana, woon in Rusland. Dus, ik ben russische vrouw. Ik how
van
   Nederlands  en ik ben deze taal aan het leren. And i like to learn more
about
   other   LL-langs   from  this groep, i also always try to read and
understand
   messages written on other LL-langs (Scots - i can understand it almost
fine!,
   Low  German  etc).
     But  this  my  mailtje  isn't about any lowlands-lang but about another
one
   which was named here few days ago (one of slavic langs, Russian).

> Reinhard/Ron
>   P.S.  In  Slavic languages, diminutive derivations always turn into
feminine
> gender, even if the stem noun has masculine or neuter gender.  Diminutive
forms
> therefore say really nothing about gender.

   Ron, i can't agree  with  this your  statement: here, in  Russian
diminutive
   derivations save  word's gender: if the word is masculine then the
diminutive
   form is also masc. and the same is with feminines. But yes, sometimes you
can
   make diminutive with changed gender-ending (by adding another suffix, we
have
   a  lot of them), but its optional and is used often for names (people
animals
   and so on)
   That's why it was very surprising for me in learning Dutch that all
diminutive
   forms  are neuter (het-words), even if the stem isn't neuter (de-word).
And i
   was extremely confused first times with the word 'het meisje'.. How it
can be
   neuter  when it's a 'girl', 'she'?! :) Just because it's a diminutive...
from
   'de meid', right?

      Vriendelijke groetjes uit West Siberië,

          Yana [Petrikevich]

----------

From: leslie at volny.cz
Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2002.09.15 (05) [E]

Ron wrote:

> P.S.: In Slavic languages, diminutive derivations
> always turn into feminine gender, even if the stem
> noun has masculine or neuter gender.  Diminutive forms
> therefore say really nothing about gender.

Ron,

I'll leave it up to you to decide if this is relevant for the list.
:-)  It may be like that in other Slavic languages, but it's not in
Czech.

ex:
Medved (M) 'bear'=> medvídek (M) 'teddy bear.'
kniha (F) 'book'=> knizka (F) 'little book'
Slunce (N) 'sun'=> slunícko (N) 'little sun, ladybird'

To make this more relevant though, the word for child, 'díte,' is
also neuter. I think it would be interesting to find out if it has
remained neuter in other Indo-European languages where the neuter
gender still survives.

Regards

Leslie Decker

----------

From: Stan Levinson <stlev99 at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language change" 2002.09.14 (04) [E]

Leslie,
I guess I am going to exemplify, if not prove,
Leslie's point.  I'm a former, longtime teacher of
TESL/TEFL, and got my MA about a year before Leslie
was born.  And I guess it's pretty obvious I'm male
also (since Leslie pointed out the gender aspect of
the "they" question, which is a very valid point).
If these are evolutionary items (they for he/she, some
other points), I'd have to say that they are very
transitional but in the past 30 years have changed
somewhat.
Certainly the question of "they" as a gender-free
singular referent was around "in my day", i.e. people
were saying "everybody has their XXX".  But while I'm
not generally very conservative in linguistic matters
(as a kind of language collector and observer), I
really feel it kind of jarring.  However, to support
Leslie, there is an article arguing her point on the
macquariedictionary.com.au site, which is fairly
interesting.
"data" is an interesting one.  I think it is very
common for people to use "data" in singular,
especially in the business world, so this is a kind of
losing battle, unfortunately one based on ignorance.
"Phenomenons"???? Sorry, Leslie, that is not
acceptable English, that is just lack of knowledge,
possibly based on the fact that it is not a word in
everyone's vocabulary anyway.
I don't think the comparison of "they" to "you" is
valid.  In many languages "you" plural has come to be
used as a polite singular.  Also, while I might
understand the gender politics aspect of this, I think
the use of they/their as a singular referent precedes
these issues.
generation gap?
Stan Levinson
>
> From: Leslie Decker <leslie at VOLNY.CZ>
> Subject: LL-L "Language change" 2002.09.13 (13) [E]
>
> I am writing this to comment about the use of 'they'
> as a non-gender
> specific singular pronoun.  I got too confused
> trying to cut and paste the
> snippets of past postings!
>
> I have to say that as a younger (26 year-old)
> American English speaker,
> 'they' sounds completely natural to me.  This is not
> anything political,
> although I am female.  As far as I'm concerned it's
> just the natural
> progression of a language--it changes.  Some people
> may resist it, which is
> well within their rights, but it may be futile.  I
> once had a linguistics
> teacher say that this is comparable to 'you' being
> used as singular and
> people who complain about 'they' should go back to
> 'thou.'  He was being
> extreme to make a point, but it made me think.
>
> I have often come across this question as a TEFL
> teacher, and I've told my
> students the same thing.  Written English is a bit
> different, and I've told
> them to use either 'he' or 'he or she,' whichever
> they prefer.  Either way
> they'll probably annoy one person or another! :-)
>
> Regarding the word 'data,' to me it's an uncountable
> noun, like
> 'information' or 'milk.'  I don't use a plural with
> it.
>
> And Ron, don't despair, to me, phenomenon is a
> perfectly acceptable word,
> the plural being either 'phenomena' or
> 'phenomenons.'
>
> Regards,
>
> Leslie Decker

----------

From: greg defriese <greg_defriese at yahoo.com>
Subject: Tom

From: Greg Defriese
Subject: Tom
  This is the first time that I have tried to add to
the conversation so I hope that what I have found is
helpful. I checked several sources and found two with
pertinent information. The first is "Klein's
Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English
Language", it says that Tom is the male of certain
male animals but doesn't say where it might have come
from. The "Oxford English Dictionary", however, does
give us more. Tom is an abbreviation of the forename
Thomas, which comes from late middle English and was
also used as a name for a male representative of the
common people or a name for an ordinary man. The last
entry says that it is the male of various animals,
especially a male cat. I checked a couple of slang
dictionaries but I didn't find anything about a
cartoon, although that may be how it became such a
popular term for male cats.

----------

From: George M Gibault <gmg at direct.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2002.09.15 (04) [E]

On Tom cats:

This is an interesting case of a more general phenomenon often missed after
enough time has passed - the broadening of a name into a word.
Chesterfield, xerox, kleenex are obvious examples, but I gather Teddy Bear
is from Teddy Roosevelt.

On the other hand, I have yet to find a reasonable explanation for the term
of affection "pooch" referring to a dog. It sounds like a British borrowing
from an Indic language, but apparently it first shows up in New York! Any
thoughts?

yours truly             George Gibault

----------

From: George M Gibault <gmg at direct.ca>
Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2002.09.15 (05) [E]

Gentlemen:
A theory - in pre-modern times the infant survival rate was so low that the
use of neuter pronouns for small children may have been part of a general
defense against the emotional devastation which accompanied losing a child.
Even as late as the nineteenth century genealogists will confirm that losing
3 of 12 children before they reached adulthood was pretty typical in many
rural areas. It also is reflected in the content of traditional orally
transmitted fairy tales such as those collected by the Brothers Grimm - the
originals - not the later sanitized editions. Incidentally, while generally
translating them to Hochdeutsch, they published a few of them in the
original Platt - lowlands north German dialect.

George Gibault

----------

From: Nigel Smith <rnigelsmith at hotmail.com>
Subject: Language change (was Language use)

Neal W. Welsh <zooman at inreach.com> wrote:

NWW > Please know that your use of "he" as a generic pronoun for both
sexes is grammatically correct in proper American and English.
NWW > Some recent objections have come from a vociferous group of
zealots whose purpose it is to destroy the English language as a part of
a political agenda.
NWW > These people can be easily ascertained as they often use the
plural pronoun "they" as a substitute for a sentence requiring the
correct and singular pronoun "he".
NWW > Their incorrect use of the language is preferable to them as they
are largely the group of modern zealots who despise anything even
remotely resembling "maleness".

and then (!!)

NWW > Besides, partisan politics has no place in an academic forum such
as ours. [...]
NWW > Neal (retired teacher)

I have been away over the weekend and have returned with some surprise
to find that there has been little reaction to Mr Welsh's comments. The
argument between "social/sexual justice/equality in language use" on the
one hand and "mangling the language" on the other could go on for ever,
and which side one favours is probably largely consistent with one's
political views on other matters, which are not on the whole suitable
material for this list.

What concerns me, however, is that this forum is read by many people
whose mother tongue/native language is not English, and I feel that Mr
Welsh's presentation of the linguistic situation is so imbalanced as to
be potentially misleading to non-native speakers, as it does not give an
unprejudiced view of the situation in modern written English. The
statement "Some recent objections have come from a vociferous group of
zealots whose purpose it is to destroy the English language as a part of
a political agenda" is not an objective statement of fact, it is a
highly biased partisan statement.

A more balanced view of the situation is given here:
http://www.bartleby.com/64/5.html. Also of interest to the current
discussion is this page: http://www.bartleby.com/64/C005/018.html ,
which makes the point that recognised writers have used _they_ &c. to
refer to singular nouns/pronouns since the 1300s.

I think it is also clear that many editors and publishers may refuse to
accept (or may rewrite) material which is blatantly
sexist/non-inclusive. The problem arises, of course, when an attempt to
avoid gender-specific language leads to constructions which sound odd or
unacceptable to readers (such as the use of 'they' with singular
antecedent, or in Standard German the clumsy 'man/frau sagt' or
'StudentInnen' forms). But just because the conscious and deliberate
manipulation of language does not always result in forms that are
acceptable to speakers does not mean that the manipulators are
necessarily zealots, or that their aim is the destruction of the
language. As mentioned in another current thread, natural selection will
ensure that some forms are filtered out over time. I personally do not
like the word "firefighter", but we now have a whole generation of
children and young people who have no way of knowing that it is a modern
coinage, in the same way that most British people in their 30s cannot
distinguish between "owing to" and "due to". Language changes, often
more quickly than we realise.

We have here a forum where we rejoice in each other's
languages/dialects/varieties/idioms and enjoy discussing them and
learning about them in an environment blissfully free of the prejudice
that one often finds in connection with some of these varieties. Mr
Welsh's over(t)ly prescriptivist views sit uneasily with the spirit of
tolerance shown by the vast majority of those who post here.

Nigel Smith
<rnigelsmith at hotmail.com>

P.S. In the light of Mr Welsh's reference to "an academic forum such as
ours", it has always been my impression that while the discussions on
LOWLANDS-L may be academic in nature/subject-matter/rigour (usually :-)
), membership is not restricted to academics or those with academic
qualifications. Perhaps Ron can confirm this.

----------

From: Nigel Smith <rnigelsmith at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2002.09.15 (04) [E]

erek gass <egass at caribline.com> wrote:

EG> And when did male turkeys come to be called "toms"?  Well, that one
I don't know.

I have never heard this -- I always thought male turkeys were referred
to as _turkey cocks_ and the females as _turkey hens_ (like _peacock_
and _peahen_). Maybe there is a difference between the US and the UK
(where turkeys are less common)?

On a related note: my grandmother, a fluent speaker of Scots, would
refer to a turkey as a _bubbly jock_. Anyone know the origin of this (or
indeed if it is normal/common usage in Scots)?

Nigel Smith <rnigelsmith at hotmail.com>

----------

From: John M. Tait <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language change" 2002.09.13 (10) [E]

>Neal wrote
>
>"Hello Mike,
>    Please know that your use of "he" as a generic
>pronoun for both
>sexes is
>grammatically correct in proper American and English.

And Gary wrote:
>
>Who says? If someone wishes to use 'they' as the
>generic term then I personally feel that THEY have
>every right in so doing.

Personally I feel that there is another issue here - the issue of cumbersome
language. The traditional use of 'he' - and the use of 'man' to mean
'mankind' - is concise, but some of the PC alternatives - such as swapping
'he' and 'she', or 'he or she' - can be cumbersome and possibly
disorientating (or 'disorienting' if you're American?) The use of 'they' as
a generic singular, however, is also concise, because it was a common
colloquial usage before political correctness was ever heard of. In other
words, it's a _natural_ usage, whereas I feel that unexpected swithering
between 'he' and 'she' isn't - after all, in real life where you know who
you're talking about (or 'about whom you are talking!') you don't swap the
gender of pronouns, and I think this is what makes it seem unnatural and
stuffy in writing.

Arguably, then, avoidance of 'they' in the singular as ungrammatical leads
to cumbersome and disorientating language. If colloquial language already
has a non-gender way of communicating, why not use it rather than invent
circumlocutions and diversions in order to conform to grammatical standards
which were laid down before gender was an issue?

I have a similar feeling about expressions like 'chair-person' etc. Why did
nobody think of 'chairbody', etc, parallel to 'somebody', 'nobody' and so
on? In American English I've heard 'body' used almost as if in Scots, e.g.
'How would a body know that?' and American English has 'homebody' as well,
doesn't it? This seems to me to be a natural linguistic development - a bit
like the use of 'they' as a generic singular - whereas 'chair-person' isn't.
It seems that official language is determined to go in a different direction
from natural development - or try to!

Isn't 'data' now perceived as a collective noun - a bit like 'stuff' or
'information' - in other words, it's neither singular nor plural?

I didn't realise that people use phenomena as a singular - is this an
American characteristic? - but I do know people who use 'criteria' as a
singular. Have we 'phenomenas' and 'criterias' to look forward to?

BTW - one American I know, of recent Cherokee ancestry and interested in
Indian affairs, speaks about 'American Indians.' It's 'red' that's out.

John M. Tait.

http://www.wirhoose.co.uk

----------

From: Elsie Zinsser <ezinsser at icon.co.za>
Subject: LL-L

Haai almal,

Die Afrikaanse voornaamwoord is emansipeer; -die- is standaard vir alle
geslagte en ook vir diminutiefvorme.

Groete
Elsie Zinsser

----------

From: Matthew McGrattan <matthew.mcgrattan at brasenose.oxford.ac.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2002.09.15 (04) [E]

Erek Gas wrote:

> This is an easy one, and shews the importance of pop culture.  A very

It might be an "easy one" but it's also wrong. :-) See below...

> popular cartoon cat appeared in American newspapers (I believe it was
> around
> the turn of the century, but don't hold me to the year) was named Tom Cat.
> He was SO popular in fact that the term, "tomcat", came quickly to be
> applied to all male house cats.
>
> If you're further curious about related words, prior to "tomcat", male
> cats
> were called "ram cats".  Female house cats were then (and now) called
> "queens".
>
> And when did male turkeys come to be called "toms"?  Well, that one I don'
> t
> know.  But the females are called "hens" just the same as female chickens.

According to the OED the use of tomcat for male cats is an 18th century
invention springing from a work of popular fiction of that time and they
have quotations to back it up - including, for example, a quote from
Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby (1838) clearly using the term in its modern
usage.

So it seems that the story of the turn of the century American newspaper
cartoon is not the origin of the term. Although possibly it is an
explanation for the popularity of that particular term for a male cat (in
North America) over some of the other extant terms.

The OED also lists a number of other species in which the male is called a
"tom" although the quotations in that section are primarily from the 1880s
and onwards.

The OED entry for "tom cat" reads:

[See TOM n.1 6.
In 1760 was published an anonymous work 'The Life and Adventures of a
Cat', which became very popular. The hero, a male or 'ram' cat, bore the
name of Tom, and is commonly mentioned as 'Tom the Cat', as 'Tybert the
Catte' is in Caxton's Reynard the Fox. Thus Tom became a favourite
allusive name for a male cat (see quot. 1791 s.v. TOM n.1 6); and people
said 'this cat is a Tom' or a 'Tom cat'.]

A male cat.

[1760 Life & Adv. of a Cat 11 Chap. iv. Tom the Cat is born of poor but
honest parents. Ibid. 31 The single adventures of Tom the Cat only.] 1809
MALKIN Gil Blas II. vii. 27 The devil fetch that tom cat! 1825 Univ.
Songster (title) The Tortoiseshell Tom-cat. 1838 DICKENS Nich. Nick. xii,
It's enough to make a Tom cat talk French grammar. 1881 J. HAWTHORNE Fort.
  Fool I. xxvii, A cur..unexpectedly confronted by a large tomcat.

Thanks,

Matthew

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2002.09.15 (04) [E]

Erek wrote:

> And when did male turkeys come to be called "toms"?

And what about one of my favourite creatures, the tomboy?
And, speaking of pronouns again, would "the tomboy" be "he" or "she"?

Gabriele Kahn

----------

From: Global Moose Translations <globalmoose at t-online.de>
Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2002.09.15 (05) [E]

Dear Charles, Fiete and others,

actually, in regular English, "the baby" is also an "it", isn't it?

I think that the reason for this is rather a sad one - before our time, many
children were usually born to a family, and quite a few did not survive.
People probably just didn't want to get too attached before they could be
reasonably sure that "it" would live; at that point, they could be granted
an identity, called by their name, and have their gender acknowledged.

Also, young boys and girls used to be dressed the same in both poor and
wealthy families up to a certain age.

In pre-20th century texts, you often find a child called just that instead
of a boy or a girl, unless the gender matters in some way. Take Grimm's
fairy tales, for example.

Gabriele Kahn

----------

From: Randy Elzinga <frisiancow at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Pronouns" 2002.09.15 (01) [E]

Hello Keith, Lowlanders,

Might this phenomenon (see posting below) go further back to indo-european
patterns?

In Greek for example, the words for a child and a small child are teknon and
paidion respectively, which are both neuter in greek.  I recall my greek
prof. saying that this was a more general phenomenon in indo-european
languages.

I don't know if I agree with Erek's comments about this not being acceptable
outside of Appalachia.  I've heard 'it' used for very young children, and
I've never been near Appalachia.  However, I have heard a very few parents
react in the way that Erek indicated.  Also I think that, once the gender of
the child is known and remembered, 'it' will no longer be used.

But note this.  When someone has baby, and someone else wants to know the
sex, the someone else will often say 'What is it?' rather than saying 'what
is the sex' or 'is it a boy or a girl.'  Also, the typical announcement
after a birth is 'IT's a boy', or 'IT's a girl' rather than 'HE's a boy' or
'SHE's a girl.'  But I don't think the neuter pronoun is used anymore once
the gender is known.

My non-expert theory is that, when the child in question is very young(only
a few months old), it is often difficult to distinguish between male or
female if the gender isn't known and the child is not wearing blue or pink,
so a neutral pronoun is chosen.  Of course then we could ask why we choose
neuter as the default grammatical gender for young children rather than
masculine which, up until about the 20th century, as we have been
discussing, has been used for both male and female  natural gender when the
gender is not known or when we are talking about a hypothetical situation.

Randy Elzinga.

>From: Charles Keith Collins <ckcollin at indiana.edu>
>Subject: Appalachian pronouns
>
>Howd'ye!  As a native of the southern Appalachians I have always wondered
>why babies and small children are given the pronoun "it".  This also seems
>to apply to small, cute pets but not livestock.  Somewhere near school
>age, a child receives a gender-appropriate pronoun (at least in my
>experience).
>
>Likewise, the use of "ye" is still alive and strong, at least in my
>family.  Upon arriving for a visit, my family and I are often greeted with
>"How are ye?" or even "How do ye?"  It has occured to me that maybe this
>is a variant of "you" as it is often pronounced in the south "yuh" or
>"ya" (more or less).  Any thoughts on this from you'ns?
>
>Which brings me to "you'ns" (or maybe best spelled "yuns" with short "u",
>contraction of "you ones" I think).
>Any reason why this should be the plural pronoun of choice and not "y'all"
>as it is in most of the rest of the south (and increasingly elsewhere)?
>
>This is my first post, and I hope any infractions will be corrected and
>forgiven.
>
>I thank'ee kindly,
>
>Keith Collins

----------

From: Colin Wilson <lcwilson at btinternet.com>
Subject: LL-L "Etymology" 2002.09.15 (04) [E]

At 01:49 16/09/02, erek gass wrote:
>This is an easy one, and shews the importance of pop culture.  A very
>popular cartoon cat appeared in American newspapers (I believe it was
around
>the turn of the century, but don't hold me to the year) was named Tom Cat.

It must have been longer ago than that: I can remember the expression
"tom cat" from much earlier, as a child in the 1960s.

Colin Wilson.

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Categories

Well, well ... add "change" to "gender" and other categorization issues, and
you get a lot of response, also from new and previously lurking Lowlanders!
Welcome to all!

Yana and Leslie, my postscript re Slavic was an oversimplification. What I
had in mind was the use of diminutive _-(in)ka_.

Nigel:

> P.S. In the light of Mr Welsh's reference to "an academic forum such as
> ours", it has always been my impression that while the discussions on
> LOWLANDS-L may be academic in nature/subject-matter/rigour (usually :-)
> ), membership is not restricted to academics or those with academic
> qualifications. Perhaps Ron can confirm this.

I herewith do, unequivocally so.  This list welcomes *all* people who share
our interests, and one of our goals is to do our best to be welcoming and
inclusive and to avoid classification and intimidation.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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