gender

[roslyn frank]

Hello,

Over the past months this thread on questions of gender in (P)IE has
provided different opinions on the issue. Would it be possible for
someone to:

1) list several of the most well-known bibliographic references on this
particular topic; and

2) perhaps summarize the *current* thinking on the issue.

I may the second request because discussions groups tend to "discuss"
but often in the process the overall outlines of what is standard in the
current (canonical??) debate get somewhat blurred. Also, it's possible
that I may have missed some of the early contributions by list members.

Currently I am preparing a paper for the upcoming ICLC '99 conference in
Stockholm. In it I briefly discuss the problem of gender in Euskera.
(Bai, badakit euskaraz hitz egiten... Kaixo Larry eta Miguel!)

Because of my interest in this particular question, I wonder if anyone
could speculate on when (along a rough time continuum) gender entered IE
languages, i.e., when (P)IE acquired gender.

And finally, has anyone contemplated the possibility that there might
have been an even earlier stage that needs to be reconstructed (e.g.
perhaps in the case of Euskera) that eventually gave rise to a
animate/inanimate dichotomy (e.g., as it is found today in Euskera)? Any
ideas on that, Larry? This would imply that cognitively speaking, there
could have been an earlier structure that was not based on an
"animate/inanimate" contrast but on another ontological type or
definition of "being."

Best regards,
Roz Frank
March 8, 1999

Department of Spanish & Portuguese
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242 U.S.A.
e-mail: roz-frank at uiowa.edu
[currently on-leave in Panama]