[SL-LING] Re: Grammatical Gender in BSL

[Trevor Jenkins]

On Sun, 23 Jun 2002, Adam Schembri, Deaf Studies wrote:

> I'm not aware of any evidence for grammatical gender in BSL (if by
> the term grammatical gender, you are referring to the type of
> grammatical phenomena found in French where nouns are classed into
> 'masculine' and 'feminine' categories and determiners and adjectives
> show agreement, as in 'le mur vert' for 'the green wall' versus 'la
> table verte' for 'the green table').

This is the gender issue I'm specifically interested in . Is there a
gender system as with other languages (like French) with masculine,
feminine, common, neuter genders? Or like Swedish, typical of the Swedes,
who only have common and neuter genders.

> Or are you interested in variation in phonology, vocabulary and
> grammar due to the gender of the signer?

Now that I've not come across. I know that Portugese has different forms
of words depending upon who says them (THANK YOU being one such example).
I don't recall seeing anything about this topic in Sutton-Spence/Woll's
"Linguistics of BSL"; their only mention of gender is in regard to
gender-less pronouns.

Regards, Trevor

British Sign Language is not inarticulate handwaving; it's a living language.
Support the campaign for formal recognition by the British government now!
Details at http://www.fdp.org.uk/

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