[Lingtyp] Typographical means to signal gender inclusiveness
Olivier Bonami
olivier.bonami at u-paris.fr
Fri Oct 25 07:42:53 UTC 2019
Hi Maïa, Sebastian, and all
This is a minor point in the context of this discussion, but note that the difference between un(e) ami(e) and un.e ami.e could be just time depth. I'm not sure how the usage of parentheses emerged exactly, but it has been a prominent way of ensuring gender inclusiveness in Canadian French for decades, and is the official policy of the "Office québecois de la langue française". The fact that it is perceived as "organic" in the context of France might be due to a 20 year time gap in sensitivity to such issues between these two countries (see Heather Burnett's work on adresses to women in French and Quebec parliaments: http://www.heatherburnett.net/uploads/9/6/6/0/96608942/lights_presentation.pdf). On the other hand, Julie Abbou (https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2010.541387) documents the use of periods in activist pamphlets from the 1990s-2000s, long before such usages gained any mainstream use.
This speaks to a more important point in this discussion: gender inclusiveness is inherently a matter of language planning, in the sense that different social groups (including different groups of linguists) with different agendas compete to deliberately maintain old conventions or establish new ones. Although, as Sebastian points out, properties of the language and the writing system put interesting constraints on what solutions are entertained, the inherently controversial nature of the conventions under discussion needs to be taken into account.
Best,
Olivier
Olivier Bonami
Professeur de linguistique, Université Paris Diderot
Directeur du Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle
UMR 7110 - Université Paris Diderot & CNRS
Tel: +33 1 57 27 57 97
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Bureau 538
> Le 25 oct. 2019 à 03:18, Maia Ponsonnet <maia.ponsonnet at uwa.edu.au> a écrit :
>
> Hello,
> Note that in French, it may be worth distinguishing two sorts of abbreviations/practices:
> Notations that developed organically and have been used informally for decades, e.g. writing 'venez avec un(e) ami(e)'.
> The recent formal definition and push for implementation of 'écriture inclusive' which became more or less obligatory in some official contexts. 'Inclusive' notations like 'tout.e.s les employé.e.s' did not develop organically, but instead resulted from planning and decisions.
> I'm sure some people have written about écriture inclusive.
> I don't this literature myself, but some names may be harvested from this very interesting podcast:
> https://www.arretsurimages.net/emissions/arret-sur-images/ecriture-inclusive-lacademie-va-contre-la-langue-francaise <https://www.arretsurimages.net/emissions/arret-sur-images/ecriture-inclusive-lacademie-va-contre-la-langue-francaise>
>
> Best, Maïa
>
> Dr Maïa Ponsonnet
> Senior Lecturer and Chair, Discipline of Linguistics
> Social Sciences Building, Room 2.36
> Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education
> The University of Western Australia
> 35 Stirling Hwy, Perth, WA (6009), Australia
> P. +61 (0) 8 6488 2870 - M. +61 (0) 468 571 030
>
>
> From: Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of Sebastian Nordhoff <sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de>
> Sent: Friday, 25 October 2019 4:36 AM
> To: lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org <lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org>
> Subject: Re: [Lingtyp] Typographical means to signal gender inclusiveness
>
> Hi Giorgio,
> this is very interesting, since Italian encodes both gender and number
> in the relevant suffixes, whereas Spanish has gender o/a but plural -s.
> In the strategy you describe, number gets dropped together with gender.
> In your example "tutt-" forces a plural interpretation, but a sentence
> like (1) is ambiguous with regard to number and could have all four m/f
> sg/pl interpretations if I am not mistaken.
>
> (1) Invitiamo * stimat* student* a sostenere l' esame
> invite.1pl ART esteemed student to sustain ART exam
> 'We invite the esteemed students to take the exam'
>
> Are you aware of any strategies for the article here (i/le/gli)?
>
> Note that German has similar problem with its articles, which indicate
> case next to number and gender. Some milieus want -x as in Spanish, but
> this leads to a six-fold ambiguity for sentences like (2).
>
> (2) Dx Mann gibt dx Frau dx Kind
> ART man gives ART woman ART child
> 'A gives B to C.' (with all possible permutations)
>
> The fusional morphology of Italian and German makes the expression of
> gender-inclusive semantics thus more complicated than e.g. in Spanish
> since there is more "collateral damage" in the domains of number and case.
>
> Best wishes
> Sebastian
>
>
>
>
> On 10/24/19 12:20 PM, Giorgio Francesco Arcodia wrote:
> > Dear Sebastian,
> >
> > In Italian, it is common to drop the gender suffix and use a star instead:
> >
> > "Dear all" > "car* tutt*" (otherwise, you would have to choose between
> > /cari tutti/ [M] or /care tutte/ [F]).
> > This works both for derivational gender (nouns) and inflectional gender
> > (adjectives).
> >
> > For instance, rather than writing:
> > per studenti e studentesse ('for studentsM and studentsF')
> > Some prefer:
> > per student*.
> >
> > Hope this helps.
> >
> > P.S.: according to the conventions of Standard Italian, the masculine
> > would be the 'correct' form for addressing both men and women.
> >
> > Giorgio
> >
> > Il giorno gio 24 ott 2019 alle ore 12:10 Sebastian Nordhoff
> > <sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de
> > <mailto:sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de <mailto:sebastian.nordhoff at glottotopia.de>>> ha scritto:
> >
> > Dear all,
> > I am interested in orthographical or typographical means to signal
> > gender inclusiveness (in a social sense) in the world's written
> > languages.
> >
> > In the last years, there has been a growing desire to replace a
> > masculine form with Something Else when referring to a) referents of
> > unknown gender or b) groups. So, in German, instead of /Dozenten/
> > 'lecturers', people now use
> >
> > (1) a. Dozenten und Dozentinnen (doubling)
> > b. Dozierende (participle)
> > c. Dozent/innen (slash)
> > d. DozentInnen (CamelCase)
> > e. Dozent_innen (underscore)
> > f. Dozent*innen (asterisk)
> >
> > In Dutch, we have
> >
> > (2) Medewerk(st)er (parentheses)
> > 'employee'
> >
> > where "-st-" signals the feminine.
> >
> > For most German or Dutch nouns, the feminine is marked by a suffix as
> > opposed to zero marking masculine. When both genders are overtly
> > marked,
> > things get more complicated:
> > In Spanish, people use the fact that the masculine marker "-o" and the
> > feminine marker "-a" look like "@" when superposed
> >
> > (3) L at s viej at s italian at s (@)
> > 'The old Italians'
> >
> > Readers can now choose to focus on the "a-shape" or the "o-shape" when
> > encountering a "@".
> >
> > In French, this strategy is not possible. Instead, one finds periods
> > separating formatives, and the reader has to select the correct ones.
> > The precise rules for the creation of the dotted forms are unclear
> > to me
> > at present.
> >
> > (4) Cher.ère.s étudiant.e.s (dotting)
> > 'Dear students'
> >
> > In (4), the ".e." can be inserted in to "étudiants" 'students' to yield
> > "étudiantes" 'female students'. But "ère" is not inserted to yield
> > "Cherères"; instead, it replaces "er" to yield "Chères".
> >
> > I would like to know more about the following questions:
> >
> > 1. Which of these strategies are used in other languages you know?
> > 2. Are there other orthographical or typographical strategies,
> > different
> > from those listed above?
> > 3. What word classes are targetted? Nouns are the obvious choice, as
> > are
> > adjectives and articles. Are there instances of interesting minor word
> > classes where this phenomenon has been observed? What about head
> > marking
> > on verbs?
> > 4. How are stem changes handled, e.g ablaut in German "Arzt/Ärztin"
> > 'doctor m/f', where the ¨ cannot readily be separated from the A?
> > 5. Is there evidence that complicated gender morphology stifles the
> > desire to be more gender inclusive?
> > 6. Are there similar phenomena in languages with non-Latin scripts?
> > 7. Any suggestions about predictors for this (geography, genealogy,
> > history, typology, sociology)?
> > 8. Are there forms created in order to include people who do not
> > want to
> > identify as either male or female (this is the case for the * in
> > German)?
> > 9. Are you aware of existing literature on this topic?
> >
> > Best wishes
> > Sebastian
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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> >
> >
> > --
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> > 馬振國博士 副教授
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> >
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