LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.27 (02) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 27 October 2009 - Volume 02
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From: Brooks, Mark <mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.22 (03) [EN]

Ron wrote: “perhaps the development of genders or other types of
classifiers.”

Oh my, Ron, that little fragment brings another question to my mind. Does
current theory account for gender coming to the proto-proto-proto
language(s) after beginning?  I presume so, but then what would gender have
come before? Morphology?

Regards,

Mark Brooks
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
 Subject: Language varieties

Hi, Mark!

Your guess is as good as mine, and I don't know of authoritative literature
about the genesis of gender marking.

My guess is that gender classification was a fairly late development in the
morphologies of some language branches, a minority of language branches
apparently. I guess such systems developed in much the same way that other
types of "noun classification" systems developed, such as that among the
Bantu languages.

The label "noun classification" is a bit misleading perhaps. It is true that
nouns are classified, but this classification affects the grammatical
morphologies of other types of words as well. Among the Indo-European
languages, for instance, adjectives morphologically adapt to the gender of
the noun, and among the Bantu languages adjectives and verbs similarly adapt
to the classes of the nouns with which they are associated. In Hebrew,
Aramaic, Arabic and other Semitic languages (a branch of Afro-Asiatic)
pretty much *all* types of words (including numerals) must be
morphologically adapted to the gender of the noun or pronoun, which is
either masculine or feminine. (No way of speaking in a gender-neutral way
there.)

Most languages of the world, however, do not have gender classification.
This includes the Iranian and Armenian branches of Indo-European, while
gender is predominant in Indo-European languages of Europe and Southern
Asia. I don't think we can tell if the Iranian and Armenian branches never
developed gender or if they lost it (perhaps Iranian under Turkic influence
and Armenian under Iranian influence). Non-gender languages that are
influenced by gender languages tend to have a hard time incorporating gender
in loanwords. This is particularly so among the Turkic languages in dealing
with gender distinction among Arabic loanwords (most of which were imported
via Iranian languages). For instance, in Uyghur they tried to introduce
feminine *mu'älimä* 'female teacher' (< Arabic مُعَلِّمة *mu‛allimah*) in
contrast to masculine *mu'älim* 'teacher' (< Arabic مُعَلِّم *mu‛allim*).
Some people may have used it, especially those proficient in Arabic and
eager to show it, but by and large the feminine variant was ignored and fell
by the wayside.

This is not to say that speakers of non-gender languages have no concept of
gender. Of course they do among most animate objects. It is only that
routinely marking gender, including for inanimate objects, is quite alien to
speakers of such languages and is perceived as being unnecessary or
redundant in most contexts. If gender *is* important in a given context, it
can be explained by other means. English speakers can relate to this no
doubt. Of course, gender marking of words for human beings are still
floating around but are on their way out in English (e.g. "waitress" vs
"waiter", "headmistress" vs "headmaster"), though some of them will probably
remain for some time to come at least (e.g. "queen" vs "king").

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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