<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===========================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 28 October 2009 - Volume 01<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);">DAVID COWLEY</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:DavidCowley@anglesey.gov.uk">DavidCowley@anglesey.gov.uk</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 "Gender" 2009.10.27 (05) [EN]<br><br></span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Tom wrote:</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
'On public transport ladies dispensing tickets were conductresses. Pure Male chavinism!'</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;">
Forgive me, but I'm going to dare to stick my neck out here and say I
don't agree that this kind of ending is 'male chauvanism' (I don't
think you said that as a joke - right?). Its just an old feature of
expression. I was brought up with conductress, stewardess, actress and
so forth and never thought of these words as being any more than giving
more information than if they had been 'unisex' words.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Old English and all other tongues I know something about seem to
happily use male and female forms, but because much gender use has died
out from English, even what little is left is attacked. I recall
talking to a feminist who declared that Welsh, German and French use of
gender for unliving things is 'sexist'. Also hearing an English foreign
lang. teacher wasting much of a lesson lecturing a beginners' class on
not saying 'stewardess', but rather 'flight attendant'.</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;">
PC over-reaction I'd say - next thing it'll be sexist to say 'he' or
'she' when talking about folk - that's only taking the same thing
further ...</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;">
David Cowley</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;">----------</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: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(91, 16, 148);">Sandy Fleming</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk">sandy@fleimin.demon.co.uk</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 "Gender" 2009.10.27 (05) [EN]<br><br></span><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="im">> From: Tom Mc Rae <<a href="mailto:thomas.mcrae@bigpond.com">thomas.mcrae@bigpond.com</a>><br>
> Subject: LL-L "Gender" 2009.10.27 (04) [EN]<br>
<br>
</div><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="im">> In Scotland in many business the lady who handled accounts<br>
> correspondence and generally kept things<br>
> going was seldom known by the well deserved title of Secretary.<br>
> Instead she was the Clerkess and this title even appeared in job<br>
> adverts. On public transport ladies dispensing tickets were<br>
> conductresses. Pure Male chavinism !<br>
<br>
</div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">And here was me calling them clippies  :)</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="im"><br>
> Even worse a lady following Judaism was known as a Jewess yet we never<br>
> heard of any Protestantesses<br>
> or Catholicesses.<br>
<br>
</div><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">A few years ago I bought pile of old writers' magazines from the early</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
1960's in a second-hand shop.</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;">
I remember particularly that one had a job advert for an "editress". Why</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
an "editress" rather than any editor, I wondered? Then I realised it was</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
because an editress in those days would only cost half as much as an</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
editor! But this isn't just keeping women poor, is it? It's also keeping</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
men out of work, even though men in general did, and I think still do,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
get the advantage of the historical situation.</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;">
I don't think it means that such words are bad in themselves, it's the</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
abuse that's bad. Dropping the words won't solve anything if the law</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
allows discrimination, because you could just as easily advertise for a</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
"lady editor".</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#888888"><br>
Sandy Fleming<br>
<a href="http://scotstext.org/" target="_blank">http://scotstext.org/</a><br><br><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">----------</span><br></font><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(91, 16, 148);">M.-L. Lessing</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:marless@gmx.de">marless@gmx.de</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Subject: </span><span class="gI"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">LL-L "Gender" 2009.10.27 (04) [EN]</span><br><br></span><div id=":1mw" class="ii gt">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff">
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Dear Jacqueline, that is strange and
interesting. I always felt otherwise, much as I consider myself a feminist. I
envy English its "neutrality" as to gender, because neutrality as to gender --
i.e. non-discrimination -- is exactly what feminism is up to. It does not matter
whether your hairdresser is a woman or a man, what matters is her/his skill. The
qualifier often directs attention to gender even where gender should not matter.
I especially like the beautifully neutral terms for professions, so as
"physicist" -- for not always confronting me with the sad fact of how shamefully
few women still are there in some scientific professions (differently from
hairdressers...). Even if someone says "I am a feminist" nobody could say
from this sentence alone whether the person is a male or a female feminist -- it
is just the person's mind, *as ought to be*. Where gender plays no role, it
should remain unnamed. I always felt German was literally haunted by these
classifiers, and I often wished them away -- not to cover up real
discrimination, but to ease the path for unbiased thinking. Imagine we had
classifiers as well for race, age, income...!!!! Though the classifiers in
themselves might be value-free -- just technical features of the language --,
language itself would be felt turning a sneering face on those who are
discriminated against in our society. </font></div>
<div>Â </div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">And then there is the ocean of
embarrassment as to political correctness. Political correctness has to
*neutralize* all qualifiers!!! Results: "Bürgerinnen und Bürger",
"BürgerInnen", "Bürger/innen" ("Bürger/innen" is often considered insulting
because it "cuts women off" (imagine the touchiness!); "Bürger(innen)" is
completely forbidden because of in-bracketing (or out-bracketing)
women</font><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">), "Studentinnen und Studenten",
"Studierende" (evading the gender-problem!) -- and finally, the inimitable Erich
Honecker's legendary nasal "Genossinnen und Genossen"-mumble... With more
qualifiers e.g. as to race this ocean would grow exponentially... and soon even
Honecker would have greeted by a simple "Hallo" :-)</font></div>
<div>Â </div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Of course all this is due to the
imperfect state of human society. In Germany now, we have a
Bundeskanzler*in*, and, to be honest, I feel less resentment against our
qualifiers when they indicate a woman's success :-) True, a woman has a
harder way upwards; but still, a uterus is not a substitute for character -- nor
for good politics.</font></div>
<div>Â </div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Hartlich!</font></div>
<div>Â </div>
<div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Marlou</font></div>
<div>Â </div>
<blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 0px; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" dir="ltr">
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;">From: <span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong</span>
<span><<a href="mailto:Dutchmatters@comcast.net" target="_blank">Dutchmatters@comcast.net</a>></span><br>Subject: LL-L "Language
varieties" 2009.10.27 (02) [EN]<br><br><span style="color: rgb(31, 73, 125); font-size: 11pt;">In Dutch there are many more of
those gender markings than in English. In the early days of feminism I felt
that having them was an advantage in this new world order. You did not have to
qualify that your hairdresser was male or female. There was ‘kapper’ and
‘kapster’ after all. </span></div></blockquote></div>
</div><br><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI">----------<br><br></span><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(91, 16, 148);">Paul Tatum</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:ptatum@blueyonder.co.uk">ptatum@blueyonder.co.uk</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" 2009.10.27 (02) [EN]</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;">Hi all,</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
From: R. F. Hahn <<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:sassisch@yahoo.com" target="_blank">sassisch@yahoo.com</a>>><br>
</blockquote>
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex; 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 /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.)<br>
<br>
Most languages of the world, however, do not have gender classification.<br>
</blockquote>
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
I feel that the business isn't much to do natural gender, but more to
do with conventional grammatical agreement. Nouns are classified into
agreement classes, which in most languages are only partially
coincident with natural gender. (In at least some Dravidian languages
like Kannada, gender and human sex are totally coincident - all nouns
denoting human females are feminine, all nouns denoting human males are
masculine, everything else is neuter). From this point of view, Bantu
nouns are distributed among many 'genders'. Chinese with its noun
classifiers would thus appear to be a (minimalist) gender language.</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
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 <br>
</blockquote><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
Iranian had the classic pIE three gender system. The earliest attested
Iranian languages, Old Persian and Avestan, are grammatically
comparable to Vedic Sanskrit. (very comparable - much more similarity
than say between Latin and Greek).</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
(perhaps Iranian under Turkic influence and Armenian under Iranian influence). <br>
</blockquote>
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
I mentioned in a previous post in this about there being a tension
between communicative clarity (encouraging redundancy) and
communicative efficiency (discouraging redundancy), which was one of
the forces driving linguistic change, but nobody asked me what on earth
I meant by this unqualified assertion. Gender is one of the prime
examples of this - the classification of nouns and agreement of
pronouns and adjectives with these noun classes is a system with a lot
of redundancy (class is marked on every element), and the loss of
gender over time decreases the amount of redunancy. The loss of gender
had already occurred by Middle Persian times, and Turkic influence is
not possible (at least, Turkic is not attested in the area at this
period).</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><font style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" color="#888888">
<br>
Paul Tatum.<br><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><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;">
</font><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: Gender</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;">Thanks, all.</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;">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).</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;">I must admit, though, that I still find it somewhat hard to believe that a language or an entire language branch abandons such classification on its own accord, without "stimulation" by way of outside influences or drastic social changes. The case of gender beginning to disappear in the Middle Iranian period (4-9th centuries, i.e. before Islam) is definitely food for thought, though I do believe that there was at least some contact with Turkic in Central Asia then.</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;">I still believe that classification does not fall out of the sky but was originally based on actually perceived classes, such as flat objects, long objects, beasts of burden, wild animals, honored humans, and so forth in counting objects in the languages of Eastern Asia (not mentioning actual measure words). Gender would be another classification of this sort in other languages. And in many cases this later grows to include other objects and the agreement classification "loses sight" of the original semantic limitations.</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;">There must be something that triggers removing such redundancies, though, if not outside influences then surely other types of changes, perhaps social changes. In Mandarin you can see several very specific classifiers disappearing and the neutral classifier </span><i style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">ge</i><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> (個,
个) spreading. Use of very specific classifiers used to be and perhaps still is a sign of superior education, and social changes in Mainland China may have triggered simplification.</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;">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?</span><br>
<br>David:<br><br><div style="margin-left: 40px;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);">PC over-reaction I'd say - next thing it'll be sexist to say 'he' or
'she' when talking about folk - that's only taking the same thing
further ...</span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"></div>
<br>That's already happening. "They" is spreading ...<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;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI"><br></span><span class="gI"><br><br></span>
•
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