Free translations of genderless reference forms

Tue Mar 8 15:31:22 UTC 2011

I think, Elena's way of handling the problem is rather straightforward. 
However, I would not only refer to (linguistic) co-text, but also to 
non-linguistic context. By this I mean, that examples stemming from 
informants also include the informant's hypothesis about the gender of 
the referential entity referred to by a (then) exophoric pronoun. Hence, 
the linguist should always try in such cases to elicit the informant's 
'gender assumption' together with the phrase itself. In other words: The 
speaker's/informant's knowledge system ~ practice concerning gender 
reference is part of the documentation of an actual utterance. In' well 
aware of the fact that this is not always easy to do. But just as an 
informant cannot ignore a proposed gender when asked to translate a 
sentence from say English or Russian to their native tongue, we cannot 
and must not ignore the speaker's/informant's own tradition. Only in 
case examples are construed by ourselves, the s/he-option makes sense. 
It then simply indicates 'underspecification' (with respect to the 
source language) or 'overspecification' with respect to the metalanguage.

As for interlinear glosses, things are more easy to handle. Here, we can 
simply put the corresponding etiquettes, such as ANAPH, or DX or so, in 
case the language at issue does not mark gender.

Bes wishes,
Wolfgang

Am 08.03.2011 14:54, schrieb E. Bashir:
> The problem seems to exist only in grammatical examples involving humans which are presented without surrounding context.  If the examples are taken from context, whether the pronoun refers to 'he' or 'she' will be clear, and should be maintained in the glosses, in my opinion.  With contextless examples involving humans, one could either (i) have a general note in the introductory materials to the grammar saying that the language in question does not mark gender on pronouns, and that a default pronoun 'he', for example, is being used throughout, but should be understood as generic third-person singular.  (ii) use the s/he and him/her strategy.
>
> eb
>
> --- On Tue, 3/8/11, Paul Hopper<hopper at CMU.EDU>  wrote:
>
>> From: Paul Hopper<hopper at CMU.EDU>
>> Subject: Re: Free translations of genderless reference forms
>> To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>> Date: Tuesday, March 8, 2011, 7:07 AM
>> There are several solutions used by
>> writers and various journals,
>> including the one Mike refers to, but the Tom's particular
>> problem is how
>> to gloss example sentences without making a point of the
>> gender. 'She/he',
>> 'him/her' seem to be unavoidable in this genre. Choosing
>> examples with
>> plural pronouns (they/them) obviates the problem, but isn't
>> always
>> possible. How do German linguists deal with this, when many
>> nouns are also
>> marked for gender?
>>
>> Paul Hopper
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, March 8, 2011 03:15, Mike Morgan wrote:
>>> Well, I have seen a few attempts at finding a solution
>> (meaning of course
>>>    there is no generally-agreed upon solution)...
>> one being using "he" in
>>> all examples in even chapters and "she" in odd
>> ones...
>>>
>>> mwm
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 9:21 PM, Thomas E. Payne<tpayne at uoregon.edu>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hello. Those of us who write in English often run
>> into the problem that
>>>>    English forces one to make a gender
>> distinction in reference forms
>>>> (e.g.,
>>>> pronouns) where the languages we work with make no
>> such distinction. I'm
>>>>    wondering whether there is a "standard" way
>> of dealing with this by
>>>> now. Does anyone know?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I'm talking about a huge number of references,
>> e.g., the free
>>>> translations of example sentences in a reference
>> grammar. It can get
>>>> very tedious to have to constantly use forms like
>> 'she/he', 'him/her'.
>>>> The free translations no
>>>> longer sound "free" at all.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for any thoughts.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Tom
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> mwm || U C>  || mike || Ð¼Ð¸ÐºÐ°  ||
>> à¤®à¤¾à¤ˆà¤• || ãƒžã‚¤ã‚¯ ||
>>> à®®à®¾à®‡à®• (aka Dr Michael W Morgan)
>>>
>> ===========================================================
>>> Senior Consultant
>>> BA Programme in Applied Sign Linguistics
>>> IGNOU-UCLan New Delhi, India
>>>
>> ===========================================================
>>> "I have become my own version of an optimist. If I
>> can't make it through
>>> one door, I'll go through another door - or I'll make
>> a door. Something
>>> terrific will come no matter how dark the present."
>> (R. Tagore)
>>
>> -- 
>> Paul J. Hopper
>> Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of Humanities
>> Department of English
>> Carnegie Mellon University
>> Pittsburgh, PA 15213
>> and
>> Senior External Fellow
>> School of Linguistics and Literature
>> Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS)
>> Albertstr. 19
>> D-79105 Freiburg i.Br.
>> Germany
>>
>
>
>

-- 

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*Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schulze *

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<mailto:W.Schulze at lrz.uni-muenchen.de>/// Wolfgang.Schulze at lmu.de 
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