<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 27 October 2009 - Volume 02<br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);"><a href="mailto:lowlands@lowlands-l.net">lowlands@lowlands-l.net</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a></span><br style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153);">
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===========================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Brooks, Mark</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:mark.brooks@twc.state.tx.us">mark.brooks@twc.state.tx.us</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI">LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.10.22 (03) [EN]<br><br></span><p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14pt;">Ron
wrote: “</span><span style="font-size: 14pt;">perhaps
the development of genders or other types of classifiers.”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">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?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Regards,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Mark
Brooks </span></p><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">----------</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: R. F. Hahn <</span><a style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Subject: Language varieties<br><br>Hi, Mark!<br><br>Your guess is as good as mine, and I don't know of authoritative literature about the genesis of gender marking.<br><br>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. </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">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 </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">all</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> 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.)</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">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 </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">mu'älimä</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> 'female teacher' (< Arabic مُعَلِّمة </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">mu‛allimah</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">) in contrast to masculine </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">mu'älim</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> 'teacher' (< Arabic مُعَلِّم </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">mu‛allim</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">). 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. </span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">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 </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">is</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> 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").</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Regards,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Reinhard/Ron</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Seattle, USA</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
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