female women

[SEMAHAT ISIL ACIKALIN]

On Thu, 5 Jun 2003 20:42:07 +0300
 Mila K Engelberg <engelber at CC.HELSINKI.FI> wrote:
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> Dear all,
>
> I'm interested in your interpretations of female terms with double
> gender
> marking, e.g. "female stewardess", "female actress", "female
> mistress" and
> "female manageress"  in English. Similar titles exist in my native
> tongue
> Finnish (which lacks both grammatical and natural gender). They
> consist
> of the prefix "nais-" 'female' and a feminine derivative, for example
> "naisjumalatar" 'female goddess', "naislaulajatar" 'female
> singer+FEM',
> "naiskaunotar" 'a female beautiful woman' or 'a female representative
> of
> female beauty', "naiskarjakko" 'female cattle maid';
>
> e.g. "Shakira on 25-vuotias kolumbialainen naislaulajatar."
> 'Shakira is a 25-year-old Colombian female singer+FEM'
>
> Similar titles can be found in several other languages, too, e.g.
> "kvinnelig gudinne" 'female goddess'  in Norwegian, "kvinnlig
> arbeterska"
> 'female woman worker' in Swedish. Gianna Marcato & Eva-Maria Thune
> (2002,
> 214, footnote) report the expression "lavoratrice donna" 'female
> woman
> worker' in Italian.
>
> Women can be female men (e.g. "female president") and female humans
> (e.g.
> "naisihminen" 'female+human being' in Finnish). But 'female women'?
> In
> Dennis Baron's view  double gender marking in such feminine forms as
> "lady
> patroness" and "womman synneresse" ('woman sinner')  occurs "perhaps
> to
> underline the inappropriateness or rarity of the feminine noun, or to
> emphasize its negativity" (1986, 115).
>
> Have you come across expressions of this kind?
>
> I wonder if there are corresponding titles for men  - I hear there is
> a
> movie called "Male gigolo".
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Mila Engelberg
> Department of General Linguistics
> Helsinki University
>
>
> References
> Baron, Dennis 1986. Grammar and gender. Yale University Press, New
> Haven,
> Conn.
> Marcato, Gianna & Thune, Eva Maria 2002. Gender and female visibility
> in
> Italian. In Hellinger, Marlis & Bussmann, Hadumod (eds.), Gender
> across
> languages.  The linguistic representation of women and men. Volume 2.
> Benjamins, Amsterdam. 187-217.
Dear Mila,in Turkish we have also marked terms.For example for female
director we say 'bayan mudur where bayan indicates the sex or bayan
ogretmen indicating female teacher.As for addressing we use ogretmen
hanim or muduranim where h sound is dropped in the second.Other examples
are:bayan doktor(doctor),bayan satici (saleswoman).etc....