[Lingtyp] Query re pronoun inventories

Mon Feb 26 08:42:31 UTC 2018

Sorry, I didn't mean to come across as angry at all! Due to writing the
email quickly, not my intent.

But this is an incredibly strong statement, with no citation: "Icelandic
society is considered to be the least sexist society in the world", used as
anecdotal evidence to argue against a generalization. I meant my question
sincerely as well, because "least sexist" is something that should be
measurable, if such a generalization is to be made.

And more importantly, if Iceland's lack of sexism still results in
country-wide protests by women, then is that really a lack of sexism? Is
there any control group available for a study of "non-sexist" countries?

On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 12:35 AM, ENRIQUE BERNARDEZ SANCHIS <
ebernard at filol.ucm.es> wrote:

> 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
>
>
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