a new gender phenomenon in Russian

[Loren Billings]

Dear colleagues:

Keith Goeringer posted the following to LINGUIST as part of a discussion of
gender change in language.  I, too, have observed this first hand, but
don't know of any published work on it.  I'd appreciate learning of any
such material.  Kindly reply to me (billings at mailer.fsu.edu) and I will
post a summary.  --Loren

Date:  Wed, 20 Mar 1996 18:41:46 PST
From:  keg at violet.berkeley.edu (Keith GOERINGER)
Subject:  gender switching

Regarding Yishai Tobin's remarks on use of masculine markers by women, I
have heard similar things from Russian women.  On more than one occasion,
I have heard different women use masculine endings on verbs and (once) on
an adjective.  The most common verb form I heard with with was *ponjal*
(masc.past tense '[I] understood'), versus *ponjala* (the corresponding
feminine form).  The adjective I heard it on was *soglasen* (masc.
short-form adj) '(I am) in agreement'.

The other verbs were along these same semantic lines -- showing agreement
or comprehension, and were generally uttered in isolation as single word
responses (or even interjections).  When I cornered them and asked them
what the deal was with this (I had never heard it previously -- this first
happened 2 years ago), they said they often used the masculine forms in
such contexts.  At first I thought it was, perhaps, a humorous sort of
gender-bending, but it seems to be more pragmatically rooted -- but I'm not
sure how, and they couldn't articulate it for me...

Anyway, my 2 kopecks' worth.

Keith

Keith Goeringer
UC Berkeley
Slavic Languages & Literatures
keg at violet.berkeley.edu


[The following was a recent reply to Keith's comment:]


Date:  Fri, 29 Mar 1996 18:48:19 +0100
From:  E.Bertoncini at mail.cnuce.cnr.it (Elena Bertoncini)
Subject:  gender switching

Regarding Keith Goeringer's remark on use of masculine markers by
women, I realized that something similar happens in Kiswahili, on the
lexical level (there is no morphological distinction of masculine and
feminine). A woman may call another woman (of the same age or younger)
"bwana" (sir), "baba" (father) or "babu" (grandfather), e.g. as a term
of endearment. The opposite never happens, you may not call a boy
"mama" or "bibi" (madam).

Elena Bertoncini
Via dell'Aeroporto 68
56121 Pisa
Italia
tel. *39-50-45419


Loren A. Billings
Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics
Florida State University
362 Diffenbaugh Building
Tallahassee, FL 32302-1020

Office Fax:    (904)644-0524
Office phone:  (904)644-8391
Home phone:    (904)224-5392

billings at mailer.fsu.edu