Free translations of genderless reference forms

[Lu, Tianqiao]

Hello all.

Tom has raised a very important and tricky question for all of us. However, this might be an unsolvable 'problem' (if it is one), unfortunately. Gender is only the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to number, tense, animacy, different coverage of semantic fields of a lexeme, etc, many sentences turn out to be "untranslatable". You either have to gloss all the options or use a footnote for it. A few examples:

Chinese: 

(1) Tā '3sg'  méi 'not'  yǒu 'have'  shū 'book'
     'He/She/It does not have a book/books.' (gender, animacy and number)

(2) Nǐ '2sg'  kànjiàn 'see'  tā '3sg'  le (PART) ? 
     'Did you see/Have you seen him/her/it?' (tense, aspect, gender and animacy)

Zhuang (southern China):

(3) Ranz 'house/family'  de '3sg'  ceiq 'most'  hung 'big'
     'His/Her house/family is/was the biggest.' (gender, semantics and tense)

(4) Duz (CL)  neix 'this'  gwai 'lovely'
     'This child/animal is lovely.'

Note:
PART=particle
CL=classifier ('duz' is a classifier for 'animal' or 'young child' in Zhuang)

Regards,

Tianqiao Lu (aka Mike)  
The Cairns Institute
James Cook University
Australia

________________________________________
From: Discussion List for ALT [LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of E. Bashir [ebashir at YAHOO.COM]
Sent: Tuesday, 8 March 2011 11:54 PM
To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: Free translations of genderless reference forms

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 || мика  ||
> माईक || マイク ||
> > மாஇக (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
>