Gender & Language: Linking Sex, Gender & Grammatical Gender in English & Other Languages -, Apuntes de Idioma Inglés

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GENDER AND LANGUAGE

Erica Sánchez Escobar

Prácticas del Máster de Literatura y

Lingüística Inglesas, 2009/

Sex versus gender

Sex: either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structure. Gender: 1) It is a cultural or social construct that embraces the assumptions we attribute to a particular sex. 2) As a linguistic/grammatical feature, gender is a type of noun class system.

Evolution of grammatical gender

 Gender becomes established in a language

gradually.

 It evolves and continues to change along with other

categories.

 It responds to changes in its linguistic environment.

 Phonetic and morphological changes also have

some effect on gender.

 In English this evolution is crucial.

Gender in Old English



Old English nouns had “grammatical gender”.



Three different sets of noun types: masculine,

feminine and neuter.

E.g.: paet wif ( “the woman”)

mōna (“moon”)



In Old English, the gender of the corresponding

pronouns, adjectives, articles, past participles is

determined by the gender of the noun to which they

refer.

Gender in Russian

 (^) The forms of adjectives, pronouns, adjective-like words and past-tense forms of verbs depend on the gender of the noun they refer to.  (^) The grammatical gender is more or less related to the meaning of a word: nouns naming males are masculine; nouns naming females are feminine.  (^) Neuter nouns refer to nonliving objects and abstract notions.  (^) Only a small group of animate nouns are neuter; “child”, “animal”.

Gender in Arabic (1)

 (^) All Arabic nouns carry grammatical gender if they refer to animate or inanimate objects.  (^) For living creatures, grammatical gender corresponds to biological gender, e.g. (جلججر) “man” is masculine, while (جمرأةا) “woman” is feminine.  (^) For inanimate objects, the relationship between grammatical gender and objects is arbitrary, e.g. (جيجرسكج) “chair” is a masculine noun, while (جلةطجاو) “table” is a feminine noun.

Gender in Polish (1)

 (^) Three categories: gender, personhood and animacy.  (^) Personhood and animacy only affect the masculine gender.  (^) The resulting system can be presented as comprising five gender classes:

• (^) 1. personal masculine
• (^) 2. animate (non-personal) masculine
• (^) 3. inanimate masculine
• (^) 4. feminine
• (^) 5. neuter

Gender in Polish (2)

 (^) The gender classification of masculine nouns does not always match up with their semantic reference.  (^) Grammatically animate nouns include nouns referring to inanimate entities (e.g. cukierek “candy”), as well as nouns used figuratively to refer to people (geniusz “genius”).  (^) In plural, personal masculine forms are used to refer to groups of males, or mixed groups of males and females.

Gender in Spanish (2)

 (^) Endings of feminine nouns -a: la fruta, la mesa, la palabra -dad, -tad, -tud: la ciudad, la amistad, la juventud. -ción, -sión, -gión: la canción, la televisión, la legión.

• Others: la madre, la mujer
• With the article “el”: el agua, el alma, el asma, el habla, el hada

Gender in Spanish (3)

- Masculine nouns:

Generally all nouns not fitting into the above

categories plus the following:

Nouns of Greek origin, ending in -ma, -ta, -pa: el

clima, el cometa, el mapa

Classification of gender in English

• Dual cousin teenager teacher doctor cook student parent friend relative colleague partner leader E.g.: Mary is a doctor. She is a doctor Peter is a doctor. He is a doctor. Arthur is my cousin. He is my cousin. Jane is my cousin. She is my cousin
• Common: E.g.: The baby is nice. It is happy

Classification of gender in English

 Collective : noun that denotes a collection of persons

or things regarded as one unit.

E.g.:

• (^) The family was/were united on this question.
• (^) The enemy is/are suing for peace.

 In BrE, however, collective nouns are more often

treated as plurals:

E.g.:

• (^) The government have not announced a new policy
• (^) The team are playing in the tennis matches next week.

Classification of gender in English

INANIMATE

They are referred to as which/it; however sometimes

they are referred to as who, he/she: It depends on

metaphorical gender.

E.g.:

This is the scarf which I bought in Madrid

The tree has red apples on it

Classification of gender in English

In some cases nouns describing things are

given feminine or masculine gender.

E.g.:

-I like my PC. He is very intelligent. -I love my car. She is my greatest passion. -France is popular with her neighbours at the moment. -I travelled from England to New York on the Queen Elizabeth.

She is a great ship.