"bromance"

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:21 PM -0400 3/27/08, Mark Mandel wrote:
>Much older than either: "male nurse".
>
>m a m

Not the same kind of marking reversal as in

Stage 1:  masseur

Stage 2:  masseur (unmarked)/masseuse (marked)

Stage 3:  masseuse

Stage 4:  masseuse (unmarked)/male masseuse (marked)

If someday there's such a disproportionate number of female doctors
or lawyers that we distinguish "doctor"/"lawyer" (presumptively
female) vs. "male doctor"/"male lawyer", that would constitute a
similar marking reversal.  There's a nice paper describing just such
a cultural shift in nomenclature for sheep and deer in Tenejapa
Tzeltal --

Witkowski, S. R. & C. H. Brown (1983) "Marking-reversals and cultural
importance", _Language_  59: 569-82.

--of this kind, where originally they had deer (before sheep were
introduced) and called them "cih".  We get:

Stage 1   cih   'deer'
Stage 2   cih   'deer'/ tunim cih 'sheep' [lit., 'cotton cih']
Stage 3   cih   'sheep'/ te?tikil cih 'deer' [lit., 'wild cih']

LH

>
>On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 9:47 AM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>wrote:
>
>>  At 9:19 AM -0400 3/27/08, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>  >Larry, needless to say, I, too, am old enough to remember when a
>>  >"masseuse" was merely a female masseur and "happy ending" was used
>>  >primarily in reference to books and movies.
>>  >
>>  >-Wilson
>>
>>  Right; "male masseuse" is a nice instance of marking reversal.  And
>>  then there's the classic retronym, the therapeutic message.
>>
>>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org