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.