[Lingtyp] Query re pronoun inventories

Mon Feb 26 08:35:20 UTC 2018

So angry! WOW!

El lunes, 26 de febrero de 2018, Daniel Ross <djross3 at gmail.com> escribió:

> 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
>>>> <https://maps.google.com/?q=Kahlaische+Strasse+10,+07745+Jena,+Germany&entry=gmail&source=g>
>>>>
>>>> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
>>>> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834 <+49%203641%20686834>
>>>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816 <+62%20812-8116-2816>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> 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
>>
>>
>

-- 
Enrique Bernárdez
Catedrático de Lingüística General
Departamento de Lingüística, Estudios Árabes, Hebreos y de Asia Oriental
Facultad de Filología
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20180226/5544575b/attachment.htm>