another inanimate "she"

[Laurence Horn]

At 3:39 PM +0000 7/17/10, ronbutters at aol.com wrote:
>trains were referred to as "she" in the 19th century, no? Maybe it
>makes more sense to see this as one of many nonce instances of
>personification, and that, in personification femme is the default
>category.

In our previous thread on this, I alluded to the feminist argument
that the <+fem> feature is not freely instantiated for all cases of
personification, but rather in particular for those involving an
entity controlled, bossed, played, or otherwise manipulated (by
man)--vessels (and remember what Freud said about those), vehicles,
musical instruments, political entities, and in this case golf
courses.  Old man river is not <+fem>, nor is the sun.  (I know, the
moon is, but there are other metaphorical factors involved there.)
Forces of nature can be personified either way, depending on other
factors (Mother Nature vs. Father Time or the Grim Reaper--or, for
that matter, God and Satan, if we see those as instances of
personification), but I don't think it's as simple as female is the
default for personification.

LH

>------Original Message------
>From: Laurence Horn
>Sender: ADS-L
>To: ADS-L
>ReplyTo: ADS-L
>Subject: [ADS-L] another inanimate "she"
>Sent: Jul 17, 2010 10:00 AM
>
>Besides ships, cars, and countries, golf courses are apparently
>female, or at least the links course at St. Andrews, where the
>British Open is currently being contested.  The coverage has dwelled
>on the semi-official moniker "The Old Girl" for the course, and there
>has been talk of "the old girl's defenses" (or defences, in the
>British press), of how whatever she gives you one day she'll snatch
>back the next, and so on.  One piece predicted, falsely as it turned
>out in the light of the windy conditions yesterday, that "the latest
>equipment has pulled the old girl's teeth".
>
>LH
>
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