participles in the NYT Mag

[Laurence Horn]

In the first paragraph of a letter to the editor in this weekend's
NYT Magazine,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25letters-t-THEETHICISTO_LETTERS.html,
a writer offers the following grammatical argument against the use of
"transgendered":
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We transgender people are not "transgendered," a word that makes it
sound like something has happened to us, rather than reflecting
something we innately are. You wouldn't say someone was "gayed" or
"homosexualed." Only verbs are transformed into participles by adding
"-ed," and "transgender" is an adjective, not a verb.

The issue brought up by your questioner is a ticklish one for us: the
ignorance of the general population as to what transgender people are
like (hint: just like everybody else, with an important difference,
much like gay people) makes us hesitant to out ourselves right off
the bat (unless the object of the date is a purely sexual one),
because it tends to distract others from seeing us as real people, as
opposed to god-knows-what sort of stereotype. The idea that we are
trying to deceive anyone is as ridiculous as it is offensive: you do
not start out trying to fool someone that you have an interest in
getting to know better. As you rightly point out, you don't blurt out
everything on a first date.
BRIDGET SMITH
San Francisco
============

The problem is that the claim that "only verbs are transformed into
participles by adding '-ed'" is untenable, as decades of studies on
participial formations have shown.  There are, for example,
"un-passives" where there is no extant corresponding verb (or no
relevant one); to say that Antarctica is uninhabited is not to
presuppose that someone (maybe penguins?) first managed to  uninhabit
that continent.  There are adjectives like "blue-eyed", "one-armed",
and such with no corresponding verbs.  Even in the case under
discussion, it's true that there's no relevant verb "to transgender",
but then if we speak of someone as highly sexed, there's no
suggestion that someone first (highly?) sexed them; similarly for
"oversexed", "undersexed", "differently-abled",...  "Gendered" itself
is used in a lot of formations with no obvious verb source:  gendered
language/ space/institutions/media...

I remember an old paper...let's see, yes, it's

Hirtle, W. H. (1970). "-ed Adjectives Like 'Verandahed' and
'Blue-eyed'." Journal of Linguistics 6. 19-36.

...that treats some of these cases. One interesting property is the
need in many cases for modification:  "blue-eyed", "one-eyed", even
"two-eyed" (in a contrastive context) are all fine, but "eyed"
doesn't seem to occur with the same (possessive, non-verbal) sense;
similarly "legged", "haired", "breasted",... (These are worse than
Gricean pragmatics alone would predict.)

If "transgendered" is to be ruled out, it may be because it's blocked
or pre-empted by "transgender" (adj.); note that "same-sexed couple"
or "opposite-sexed couple" (or "mixed-sexed couple") don't work as
well as "highly sexed", presumably because of blocking by adjectives
of the form "same-sex", "opposite-sex"

The writer's comparison with "*gayed" and "*homosexualed" is also
misleading because those are formed from adjectives, while
"transgendered", like "blue-eyed" or "verandahed", does allow the -ed
to attach to a noun, which seems to work better.  In fact, while
"opposite-sexed couple" sounds pretty bad, as noted, I find that
"heterosexualed couple" sounds worse.

Well, OK, Ms. Smith probably isn't a linguist, and her point is
otherwise well-taken; indeed, "transgendered" may indeed suggest that
someone did something to bring that state of affairs about.

Maybe they should run letters to the Magazine by Ben first.

LH

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