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Languages without Gender? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| gizmo2012 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4907 days ago 49 posts - 49 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French | Message 9 of 23 07 January 2011 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||
Why is that? Is it just because it just wasn't used that much? Did English ever have it? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5157 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 10 of 23 07 January 2011 at 10:52pm | IP Logged | ||
Finnish also has a single word for he and she - hän. Outside the Indo-European and Semitic language families grammatical gender is more of an exception than the rule, actually. It just seems so common because our view is biased in the first place: most of us study languages such as Spanish, French, German and Russian, all of them gendered, so thinking that most other languages also have grammatical gender comes as a natural assumption if you don't know any better. (Also, nouns having arbitrary gender is the most useless grammatical feature ever.) 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5645 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 11 of 23 08 January 2011 at 12:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Old English did have grammatical gender but there appears to be controversy as to how this worked and why it was lost:
From Grammatical to Natural Gender by Jesse Archibald-Barber copyright 2001 Gender can be a complicated category of language, and language change. To help clarify the issue, it is important to distinguish two types of gender systems, one according to grammatical conventions, the other according to natural conventions. The traditional theory holds that at one time English had a grammatical gender system, but made the transition to a natural gender system “in the East Midlands of England by the early twelfth century” (Smith 130). However, recent scholarship by Hans Platzer critiques the traditional theory, revealing that the issue is much more complex. Rather than a systematic transition from a homogeneous grammatical gender system in OE to a natural gender system by ME, Platzer reveals that the history of English gender marking has always been characterized with “conflicting tendencies” (36). The acute insights of Platzer’s research will be discussed below, but first a definition of grammatical and natural gender and their importance to the history and structure of the English language will be given. A grammatical gender system uses inflections to indicate whether a referent’s gender is masculine, feminine or neuter. Inflections are affix-tags attached to words, and involve a more complex system of declensions for nouns, pronouns, adjectives and determiners, which must agree, or concord, with the noun’s gender. For instance, if a noun is grammatically masculine, such as cyning (king), it requires a corresponding masculine inflection, and any determiner, pronoun or adjective related to the masculine noun must also take the appropriate declension. Hence, se cwic cyning (the living king) is grammatically correct, whereas seo cwicu cyning is incorrect because seo is a feminine determiner and the –u on cwic is a feminine inflection for the adjective. Rather, seo cwicu cwen (the living queen) is grammatically correct. It should be noted that in the above examples, the grammatical gender of the nouns happens to correspond to the natural gender of their referents -- male-king, female-queen. However, a grammatical gender system can also run counter to a referent’s biological sex. A classic instance is se wifmann (the woman). Although the referent’s natural gender is feminine, because gender is grammatically conveyed, the noun happens to be masculine, and is therefore inflected according to a masculine declension, taking a masculine form of the determiner as well. Any other word related to wifmann must also inflect itself as masculine for purposes of grammatical agreement, or concord. A natural gender system, on the other hand, indicates gender according to its referent’s biological sex. In a sense, in a natural gender system, gender is hardly even a category (Classen 101), for nouns and pronouns reveal the referent’s gender themselves, and determiners and adjectives take the same form, whether modifying a masculine, feminine or neuter referent -- hence, the happy woman, the happy man, the happy cat – she, he, it is happy. It must be further noted, however, that neither gender system is less ambiguous than the other, and neither is universally used (Classen 98). Nonetheless, as the simplicity of a natural gender system works well for PDE, one may ask, why did grammatical gender arise in the first place? And if the grammatical gender system once worked, why was there a subsequent shift to a natural gender system? Traditional theories attribute the origin of grammatical gender systems to the human-primitive tendency to anthropomorphize nature, when one endows human qualities to non-human creatures and objects (Ibrahim 16). Another theory raised by James Frazier of Golden Bough fame is that early men and women spoke a differently inflected form of the language from one another (Ibrahim 19). However, these kinds of speculations assume a universal tendency in human linguistic relations to the world, and break down with the fact that many languages have never had a grammatical gender system (Ibrahim 24). Rather, Ibrahim argues that grammatical gender is an “accidental outcome of the linguistic development of some languages” (102). Indeed, studying the human-animate nouns of OE, one finds that nearly all of their grammatical genders correspond to their natural genders to begin with (Platzer 35). Instances like se wifmann are exceptions and not the rule, and even then such words often took the natural gender rather than their original grammatical gender (Platzer 42). As such, there is a general consensus that “at some stage in its development, [grammatical gender] must have been an extension of natural gender into the sphere of language” (Ibrahim 30), allowing for a more articulate distinction of gender in human-animate nouns. The main function and advantage of grammatical gender, therefore, is its ability to clarify syntactic agreement in otherwise ambiguous cases (Ibrahim 26). Thus, a language based on grammatical gender can indicate the gender of an unsexed noun with inflections, whereas the English natural gender system must add the words ‘male’ or ‘female’ to make the referent’s sex clear, such as ‘a male Canadian’ instead of ‘a Canadianat.’ But if grammatical gender is so effective as a linguistic marker, the question still remains, why did English change to a natural gender system? To fully answer this question, one must follow Platzer in dispelling traditional misconceptions about the status of the grammatical gender system in OE. The traditional theory is that in OE it became very difficult to distinguish gender, due to the leveling of determiners to one form (i.e. se, seo, paet to ‘the, that), and the general loss of inflectional endings (Classen 97). Such an explanation, however, begs a further question: why did English lose its inflections in the first place, when other European languages clearly function fine with them? Amid vast speculation, two related reasons stand out, one linguistic, and the other social-historical. As David Crystal explains, linguistically, “the most obvious explanation is that it became increasingly difficult to hear [inflections]” (32) because most words had the stress at the beginning. This initial stress “readily g[a]ve rise to an auditory problem at the end [, . . .] especially when there were several endings which were phonetically very similar, such as –en, -on, and –an” (32). However, one may still ask, why did English lose its inflections and not other Germanic languages, which have a similar stress pattern? The primary explanation is that, in addition to linguistic-phonetic ambiguity, social-historical conditions in the late OE period facilitated the loss of inflections. Baugh argues that the Norman Conquest “brought about conditions favorable to such changes” (200). By making French the language of prestige, and “English the language mainly of uneducated people[,] the Norman Conquest made it easier for grammatical changes to go forward unchecked” (200). As English writing institutions were supplanted, grammatical features altered according to speech patterns that may have otherwise been maintained by clerical custodians of the language. Hence, with the loss of inflections and the further leveling of determiner-forms unmarked for gender, English came to rely on the referent’s natural sex to indicate gender, implying that the loss of grammatical gender was already underway in spoken OE. However, although this traditional theory makes sense, many contemporary scholars believe that more personal and psychological factors were involved. The above reasons of inflectional loss and determiner leveling were no doubt influential factors and products of the transition from grammatical to natural gender systems, but many scholars feel they are not the main reasons. For instance, Classen contests the theory “that natural gender sets in after the confusion arising from the loss of inflections” (98). Such a theory treats natural gender as a substitute for a lost grammatical system, when, as mentioned above, grammatical gender is an extension of natural gender. Instead, Classen argues that “the evidence which is available goes to show that natural gender came in by way of the personal pronouns” (100), positing that OE speakers made a strong distinction between human and non-human categories, including sexless and non-living things (101). This is not to say that personal pronouns did not exist in OE, but that as OE gender pronoun distinctions began to level, the advent of ‘he, she, and it’ augmented the tendency to distinguish between human and non-human categories. As such, in addition to linguistic tendencies, and social conditions, Classen believes that psychological choices played the key role in the transition from grammatical to natural gender system. Platzer takes Classen’s critique a step further, arguing that the notion that OE ever had a homogenous grammatical gender system, which became natural after the loss of the inflectional system, is simplistic and deceiving. Focusing on human animate nouns, he argues that “in contradistinction to the rest of the system, human animates show a marked tendency towards natural gender assignment” (35). What Platzer means is that OE had neither a totally systematic grammatical or natural gender system, but that the presence of both created “conflicting tendencies” (36). Indeed, as a result of the conflicting tendencies, Platzer argues that even the natural gender system “does not equate the gender of the noun with the sex of its referent. Rather, gender is merely related to the class of referent involved so that human animates take masculine or feminine gender while all other classes of referents (animals, plants, objects, abstracts) receive neuter gender” (36). Therefore, the English gender system in general is not so much based on natural sex, or grammar, but on the class distinction between (human) animate and (non-human) non-animate referents. For instance, Platzer cites statistical evidence that in the class of human animates, grammatical gender already coincided with natural gender in over 90% of the lexical types involved (38). Moreover, as Blake points out, “even in Old English, grammatical gender had not been consistent, especially when a pronoun had been separated from the noun it referred to” (147). Natural gender is therefore the rule in OE human animates, while grammatical gender is the exception (Platzer 39). However, Platzer goes on to point out that gender marking is still not clear-cut in the case of non-animates. For one, the class of animates includes only human animates “despite the fact that [. . .] plants and animals are clearly animates as well” (36). Moreover, where one would assume that non-animates should take the neuter as their natural gender, the opposite was in fact the case. In the case of non-living things, “gender assignment in non-animates shows an active tendency away from natural gender” (40). For instance, rather that take the neuter gender, se stan (the stone) is masculine, and seo duru (the door) is feminine. This contradictory tendency created the “identical effect” (40) of weakening the neuter in both classes. The elimination of the neuter from human animates is clear enough, but in the case of non-animates, because they tended toward grammatical gender, they also avoided their natural gender of neuter. The issue becomes more complicated in the case of animals, as they tended to “shift between the two classes of animate and non-animate depending on ‘familiarity or involvement’ (Biber 1999:317)” (36). In the case of animals, therefore, the attribution of gender depended more on pragmatics -- the attitude of “the speaker rather than on the referent” (36). Hence, one most likely uses ‘it’ when referring to a creature like an ant, but ‘he’ or ‘she’ when referring to a pet. In many cases, moreover, the gender of an animal, especially mammals and birds, was often indicated by specific lexical types for male and female referents, hence cow / bull, doe / buck. In general, however, as Baugh argues, the use of masculine and feminine gender for non-animates is not a function of grammatical or natural gender, but of attributive gender, a type of “personification and a matter of rhetoric, not grammar” (11). Nonetheless, Platzer succinctly points out that the conflicting tendencies of human animates toward natural gender, non-animates toward grammatical gender, and animals to shift between classes, leads to a difficult paradox: “The obvious trend towards natural gender in the animate nouns can only be fully realized by the total loss of the neuters from this sub system. However, as soon as this weakening of neuters is extended to the whole system, i.e. to non-animates as well, it results in a reciprocal strengthening of grammatical gender in the subset of non-animates” (44). So, what finally pushed the non-animates into the natural gender system? Unfortunately, most current theories do not have a developed answer for this. One can only speculate that once the neuters were completely marginalized, the trend to keep the human animates separate from non-animates eventually collided with the trend to level determiners. As mentioned above, with the “gradual loss of pe and the replacement of the paradigm se, seo, paet by indeclinable that” (Fischer 296), it no longer became possible, or necessary, to establish grammatical agreement for inflected nouns. Furthermore, as non-animates increasingly became excluded from the human animate use of masculine and feminine categories, they were eventually leveled to the neuter. Overall, the move from grammatical to natural gender involves diverse linguistic, social and psychological factors that still require active speculation and research 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jsun Groupie Joined 4898 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes | Message 12 of 23 08 January 2011 at 10:24am | IP Logged | ||
她 didn't exist until the early 20th century. Many men at that time condemned the use of 她. It's a product of westernisation and feminism. To this day, other Chinese languages still don't have a special pronoun for women. Even though Chinese languages don't have gender, every character is charged with sex(ism) or features of gender roles. Just take your character as example. 人+也 = 他 也 originally means vagina. 
Many people say it looks like penis, but no, it is a vagina. Therefore, you also see the character 地 ( land), which is the combination 土(earth) + 也 (vagina), as land "gives birth" to plants and nurture this planet .... And from this, you understand why 他 is a personal pronoun. 他 = 人(person) from a 也(vagina). There was an ad of a bakery. it says, "Give girl a home, that's "married". 
Because 嫁 (marry, for women) = 女(woman) + 家 (home) Many male viewers think that this ad is a bunch of crap - in this era that emphasises so much on gender equality - "why do we have to give women our houses? They can earn their own. Stop the crap." Last year, there was a lawyer in China proposed the deletion of woman radical 女部 from all the negative meaning characters , such as 妒(jealous), 妨(to interfere), 姦(rape), 奴(slave), 妖(evil spirit).... Edited by jsun on 08 January 2011 at 10:40am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| WentworthsGal Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4701 days ago 191 posts - 246 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish, Spanish | Message 13 of 23 11 July 2011 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I read that an example of where we still use gender for items (insert correct grammatical term here - it's late and my brain's tired lol) is where we sometimes refer to a boat as she. (In the English language that is). Edited by WentworthsGal on 11 July 2011 at 11:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6472 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 14 of 23 11 July 2011 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Since you’re learning Swedish I must add that we in Sweden, although masculine and feminine collided some hundred years ago, still adress the time or the clock as ‹she›, as do we do with boats, sometimes schools, and in certain dialects the three gender system died just about 50 years ago. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| WentworthsGal Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4701 days ago 191 posts - 246 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish, Spanish | Message 15 of 23 12 July 2011 at 9:52am | IP Logged | ||
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[/QUOTE]
Since you’re learning Swedish I must add that we in Sweden, although masculine and feminine collided some hundred years ago, still adress the time or the clock as ‹she›, as do we do with boats, sometimes schools, and in certain dialects the three gender system died just about 50 years ago.[/QUOTE] Tack så mycket! Jag ska (försöka) dem minnas :o) Ok, I tried to write that *without* using Google Translate lol... Please feel free to correct it :o) x 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4991 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 16 of 23 08 August 2011 at 11:08am | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's mostly Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic feature.
Hm, in Korean and Japanese they didn't have separate pronoun for "she", so it seems they have made it up. It look horrible, they have added Chinese pronuntiation of woman, to native root :S and now whole worl is seeking Gender neutral language, if they woul stay the way it was they would be hip. In Manchu and Altaic language there is a thing called female and male vowels (yin and yang). haha = man hehe = woman. though it's not so much associated with gender in those languages (except for Manchurian). Abantu languags on the other hand, have many more categories for nouns. World grammar is really interesting. I like to learn different grammars, it shows in how different way can people think. How can be a language different than your native one? it's really fun to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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