[Lingtyp] Query re pronoun inventories

[Daniel Ross]

According to whom? Maybe relatively least by some metrics, but recent news
would disagree with it being optimal:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/iceland-
women-protest-strike-gender-pay-gap-leave-work-early-a7378801.html
And more importantly, historically it was even worse, suggesting that
despite modern changes, maybe the language did relate to the original
situation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Icelandic_women%27s_strike
I'm not claiming this supports a hypothesis of necessary correlation or
causation (in fact, I find that hypothesis to be unlikely), but I disagree
with Icelandic being a (clear) counterexample. On the other hand, the
acceptability of protest and even awareness itself seems to correlate with
relatively better conditions in some sense, such that perhaps strikes like
that are somehow an indication of a society shifting toward a less sexist
situation (and lack thereof indicating a worse situation?), however
counterintuitive that may be. But any ranking of that sort seems uncertain
to me, so I don't know that I would trust a statistical correlation even if
one were found.

It would take a lot to convince me that any study of this sort (or, say,
tenses vs. economics!) is anything but statistical fishing for interesting
correlations in the data using specific (arbitrary) metrics. One of the
biggest problems is comparing things at broad levels (as mentioned above
about looking at countries as a whole versus individual
speakers/languages), and that indeed there may sometimes be a relevant
correlation, but I don't see why that would necessarily always be the case
(for example, if a language were brought to a new population and they
started using a gender distinction, only a very strong version of
linguistic relativity would explain why they would suddenly become sexist).
The best approach to finding a compelling relationship of this sort would
be, I think, diachronic, with further detailed analysis, rather than broad
synchronic correlation.

As for using the neuter instead, that would be more relevant if it were for
individuals who do not fit the typical binary gender system. If "singular
they" for example were typically used for other groups. But I'm not aware
of that usage in any language. If there are such examples, it would be
directly relevant to the question.

Daniel

On Sun, Feb 25, 2018 at 11:33 PM, ENRIQUE BERNARDEZ SANCHIS <
ebernard at filol.ucm.es> wrote:

> I forgot: my "brief note" is about Icelandic.
>
> 2018-02-26 8:33 GMT+01:00 ENRIQUE BERNARDEZ SANCHIS <ebernard at filol.ucm.es
> >:
>
>> A brief note on David's comment. When there is reference to a mixed group
>> (male-female) the neuter plural is used, both of the personal pronoun
>> (thau) and possible articles. On the other hand this does not point to a
>> three-gender system but is just a matter of reference. Remember also that
>> Icelandic has three fully active grammatical genders (masculine, femenine
>> and neuter) and that Icelandic society is considered to be the least sexist
>> society in the world. The relation between sexism and grammatical gender
>> doe not seem valid. Another point: some Indian (=First Nation, Native
>> American) cultures, especially in North America, recognised the "two
>> spirits" people (man and woman at the same time, without any correspondence
>> in the pronominal system. Also, the Samoan "fa'afafine" are referred to
>> without any reference to sex/gender, as Samoan does not have such
>> distinction.
>>
>> 2018-02-26 5:52 GMT+01:00 David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>:
>>
>>> Two points on this topic.
>>>
>>> First, I would like to amplify what I think is a very important point
>>> made in passing by Rikker:
>>>
>>> On 26/02/2018 04:51, Rikker Dockum wrote:
>>>
>>>> Responding to Ian's comments on Thai (which is often classed as a
>>>> 'natural gender' pronoun system but has no grammatical gender),
>>>>
>>> Indeed, it would be very strange to think of Thai as being a "gendered"
>>> language in the same way as, say, French or Hebrew, in which the
>>> masculine/feminine distinction permeates the grammar. Rather, the limited
>>> distinction between what are perhaps more appropriately referred to as
>>> "male" and "female" forms in Thai would seem to be more akin to the various
>>> terms of address in a language such as Malay/Indonesian, which reflect
>>> distinctions in biological sex, as well as age, social status, race and
>>> other features — and nobody would say that Malay/Indonesian has gender, any
>>> more than it has, say, race.
>>>
>>> Secondly, and going out a bit on a limb here, because I'm not an expert
>>> in gender studies, it seems to me that although Southeast Asian languages
>>> have monomorphemic terms to denote the "third" sex (e.g. Thai "kathoey",
>>> Tagalog "bakla", Malay "pondan", Indonesian "bencong"), I suspect that the
>>> *conceptualization* of the third gender in the respective societies still
>>> involves elements of hybridization, combining male and female features
>>> rather than starting afresh with a new primitive gender.  (In other words,
>>> a bit more like the kind of conceptualization reflected by English-language
>>> terms such as "male-to-female transgendered".)  To the extent that this is
>>> the case, one would perhaps be less likely to encounter a language with a
>>> three-way grammatical paradigm for male/female/3rd-sex.
>>>
>>> It's a bit like gender-resolution for mixed plural NPs.  If I remember
>>> my Corbett correctly (I'm currently miles away from his books), given a
>>> sentence such as "JOHN AND MARY CAME-AGR", there is no language with gender
>>> agreement in which there is a special gender for mixed male-and-female
>>> groups; usually, and sexistly, the resolution is to the masculine. (I
>>> vaguely half-remember some Daghestanian(?) language in which the resolution
>>> is to some 3rd or even 4th gender with other inanimate(?) meanings, but
>>> this still doesn't constitute a special gender for "male-plus-female").
>>>
>>> David
>>>
>>> --
>>> David Gil
>>>
>>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>>> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>>>
>>> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
>>> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834 <+49%203641%20686834>
>>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816 <+62%20812-8116-2816>
>>>
>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Enrique Bernárdez
>> Catedrático de Lingüística General
>> Departamento de Lingüística, Estudios Árabes, Hebreos y de Asia Oriental
>> Facultad de Filología
>> Universidad Complutense de Madrid
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Enrique Bernárdez
> Catedrático de Lingüística General
> Departamento de Lingüística, Estudios Árabes, Hebreos y de Asia Oriental
> Facultad de Filología
> Universidad Complutense de Madrid
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lingtyp mailing list
> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>
>
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