LL-L "Language change" 2009.10.29 (02) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 29 October 2009 - Volume 02
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From: Paul Tatum <ptatum at blueyonder.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Gender" 2009.10.28 (01) [EN]

Hi Ron and everybody,


 From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com <mailto:sassisch at yahoo.com>>
> Subject: Gender
>
> Thanks, all.
>
> Those are really interesting points, Paul, an interesting way of viewing
> this subject matter. So, if I understand you correctly, we are really
> talking about a broader group of what we might call "classifying languages"
> within which gender is only one type of classification, a type in which
> gender classification includes actual gender but often grows beyond natural
> gender (as in most Indo-European languages).
>

Maybe agreement classes ('genders') are one of the implements available in
the linguistic toolbox. What they classify is individual to each language -
masculine vs feminine, m versus f versus neuter, animate versus inanimate,
long versus broad versus...etc. Some of the Dravidian languages, like
Kannada, have 'perfect' gender systems - all nouns denoting human males are
masculine, all nouns denoting females are feminine and all the rest are
neuter, but I think this just seems to highlight how arbitrary genders can
be in other languages. Perhaps part of the function of gender classes is to
differentiate things that are felt to be associated but different, so in
French we have 'le soleil' and 'la lune', while in German it is 'der Mond'
and 'die Sonne' - what is important is not the precise gender, but that they
have different genders. So maybe languages can grow from a situation of 'a
noun arbitrarily belongs to one of the genders' to the situation which
obtains in Kannada, by a process of attraction - one gender class contains
more males than other gender class(es), and it becomes the default class for
new nouns denoting males, and so the association grows.

 So my basic question is this: Can such redundancies disappear on their own
> accord, and if they can not, what sorts of factors can lead to abandoning
> classifying?
>
My own view of a language is that it is a dynamic system in an unstable
state of equilibrium which is always subject to forces such as analogy,
assimilation, dissimilation, emphasis and reinterpretation which means that
it is always has the possibility of changing in some unpredictable way. When
we look back at a change, there usually seems to be many explanations that
might be relevant, be it language contact, internal pressures in the
language or physical factors such as the high mountain air causing more
energetic stops (!) (I like to imagine Germanic herders, each on his
mountain peak, shouting across the valley something like 'HOLA RUDHI, HAST
DHU MEINE KHUEHE GHESEHEN?). Some of these explanations seem more likely
than others, and some seem to provide more explanation than others, but in
the end it seems hard to point to one explanation and say this is the answer
and other explanations are irrelevant. Studying languages is a lot like
studying insects frozen in amber, in that each different view shows a
different facet of the subject, but no one view shows the whole, and also
you know that the thing once lived and moved.

Enough thinking already, nighty night (or good morning, depending on where
you are)!

Paul Tatum.

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

Thanks loads for your further elucidation, Paul. Very interesting once
again.

You may be familiar with this already, but I'll mention it at least for
other peoples' benefit, that in Manchu and a bit also in Mongolian (where it
is used in vowel harmony explanations), though as Altaic languages having no
morphological and pronominal gender marking,  there are instances in which
gender is marked phonologically. Traditionally, front vowels (of which there
is only one left in Manchu, and it has become schwa, usually spelled "e" in
Roman script) are considered feminine (Manchu* hehengge*) while back vowels
are considered masculine (Manchu* hahangge*). There are some minimal pairs
of words in which this is clearly seen; e.g. Manchu *eme* 'mother' versus *
ama* 'father', and *hehe* 'woman' versus *haha* 'man'.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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