LL-L "Gender" 2009.10.28 (02) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 28 October 2009 - Volume 02
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From: Stan Levinson <stlev99 at yahoo.com>
 Subject: LL-L "Gender" 2009.10.28 (01) [EN]

*I'll stick my neck out there with David Cowley.   The thing that makes this
a serious discussion is the question at the end: are "he" and "she" sexist
words (as opposed to sex/gender words)?  How about languages that don't
distinguish gender in third person (e.g. most East Asian languages that I
know anything about)?  Are those societies less sexist?  How about languages
that insist on gender differentiation in second and third person, singular
and plural?  Are they more sexist?
I suppose the origins of these distinctions lie in societal "needs", but now
they "just are".
Stan

*
From: DAVID COWLEY <DavidCowley at anglesey.gov.uk>
 Subject: LL-L "Gender" 2009.10.27 (05) [EN]

Tom wrote:
'On public transport ladies dispensing tickets were conductresses. Pure Male
chavinism!'

Forgive me, but I'm going to dare to stick my neck out here and say I don't
agree that this kind of ending is 'male chauvanism' (I don't think you said
that as a joke - right?). Its just an old feature of expression. I was
brought up with conductress, stewardess, actress and so forth and never
thought of these words as being any more than giving more information than
if they had been 'unisex' words.
Old English and all other tongues I know something about seem to happily use
male and female forms, but because much gender use has died out from
English, even what little is left is attacked. I recall talking to a
feminist who declared that Welsh, German and French use of gender for
unliving things is 'sexist'. Also hearing an English foreign lang. teacher
wasting much of a lesson lecturing a beginners' class on not saying
'stewardess', but rather 'flight attendant'.

PC over-reaction I'd say - next thing it'll be sexist to say 'he' or 'she'
when talking about folk - that's only taking the same thing further ...

David Cowley

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From: Brooks, Mark <mark.brooks at twc.state.tx.us>
 Subject: LL-L "Gender" 2009.10.28 (01) [EN]

David and Ron:

PC over-reaction I'd say - next thing it'll be sexist to say 'he' or 'she'
when talking about folk - that's only taking the same thing further ...
That's already happening. "They" is spreading ...

I ran into this problem a few years ago when writing training material for
employees at my state agency. I frequently found myself writing, “When a
claimant calls, tell him/her…” I could never satisfactorily deal with that
“he/she,” “s/he” conundrum. I didn’t like the idea of writing he/she every
time I wanted to use a pronoun. So, I’d use “he” for a few sentences and
“she” for a few. Still, that didn’t seem satisfactory.

I attended a writing seminar, and the instructor suggested making the noun
plural, so that we could just use “they” in the independent clause. I have
found that it works quite well with only a few exceptions.

Mark Brooks
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From: heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk <heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk>
 Subject: LL-L "Gender" 2009.10.28 (01) [EN]

I have said before on this forum that the grammarian who decided to describe
patterns of nouns as 'masculine' 'feminine' and 'neuter' did us all a huge
disservice. They are (almost) arbitrary appellations - except where there is
clearly a gender bias ( actor/actress:  king:queen).

If I recall my (40 year old) studies of Sprachentwicklung from Krahe et al.
word patterns developed along fairly strict lines in PIE so that a change in
nuance effected a change in spelling of the basic root concept. Whole
families of patterns were built up and originally the agreement of any
adjective or article ( if they could be called such) agreed with the ending
pattern of the noun.

As these were eroded, so the patterns coalesced and from being multiple they
reduced to fewer - How many declensions was Latin left with? 5? 6? French,
Spanish & Italian have reduced these further to two. German has retained 3 -
for how much longer in spoken language, one wonders?

So the only problem with 'gender' is the word itself which brings with it
untold baggage - especially in the last 100 years and more especially in the
last 40 years.

If grammarians had chosen any other word to describe the patterns of nouns -
'the covey of nouns'; 'the quilt of nouns' 'the blue/red/green nouns'  then
we wouldn't have the problems we do with 'gender'

Heather

Worcester UK
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From: Hellinckx Luc <luc.hellinckx at gmail.com>
 Subject: LL-L "Gender"

Beste Ron,

You wrote:

There must be something that triggers removing such redundancies, though, if
not outside influences then surely other types of changes, perhaps social
changes. In Mandarin you can see several very specific classifiers
disappearing and the neutral classifier *ge* (啗, 个) spreading. Use of
very specific classifiers used to be and perhaps still is a sign of superior
education, and social changes in Mainland China may have triggered
simplification.

So my basic question is this: Can such redundancies disappear on their own
accord, and if they can not, what sorts of factors can lead to abandoning
classifying?

Could it be that just like European languages were somewhat modelled after
Latin during medieval times (cf. popularity of declension system), Middle
Iranian got sort of formatted like Mandarin, regarding gender?

Especially during the Sassanid era, relations between Iran and China were
quite intense:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-China_relations

I wouldn't be surprised that back then, Persia may have had language
architects, trying to refurbish Iranian.

Kind greetings,

Luc Hellinckx, Halle, Belgium

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Gender

Hi, guys! ;-) And it's especially nice to hear from you again, Stan!

"They" as a quasi-singular gender-neutral pronoun is most definitely
spreading at least in certain circles in the US. I have noticed that some
people now use it naturally, namely even when use of either "he" or "she"
would be called for, but most often when the person's identity is (kept)
unknown. For instance, I remember one guy in an all-male meeting group
saying something like "One of you handed me this note. They wanted to remain
anonymous." In a men's locker room I once saw a note saying something like
"To the guy who took my blue-and-white towel: they'd better return it or
they'll be in trouble."

Luc, I don't know if Sino-Persian contacts play a role in this context, but
you are quite right in pointing out a long history of relations among
Chinese and Persian people. By the Tang dynasty (618–907), sizable Persian
merchant communities lived in China, originally Persian-derived (though
perhaps Turkic-transmitted) musical instruments were long established, and
Persian painting started taking on what look like Chinese-inspired
techniques and looks. Also, there appear to be links between Persian and
Chinese dance styles, though Turkic and Indian transmission may be involved
there as well. Furthermore, Sogdians and Scythians had long-standing
contacts with the Chinese (as well as with Turkic peoples), and their
languages are Iranian, too.

As you may know, Modern Farsi has at least one commonly used counting word
for individual objects: *dāne* (دانة, Tajik *дона*, also meaning 'seed' or
'grain'). It behaves much like Mandarin *ge* (個, 个). This is particularly
often used when the noun is omitted the second time around, as in Classical
Chinese. In Hamburg Missingsch this works similarly with *Stück *'piece';
e.g. *Wieviel Bonschies/Marmeln/Geschwister hassu?* - *Fümf (St**ück).* (How
many candies/marbles/siblings do you have? - Five (pieces).) But the only
classification that is going on here is in counting individual objects or
pieces of objects.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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