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Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

antigonejournal.com

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Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#31

Post by gumby »

allturtles wrote: post #6

I didn't read the whole article but skimmed through it and didn't see a clear answer to the question "why does grammatical gender exist"? As a native English speaker, I've never understood why it was invented in the first place.

Gender is a specific case of the more general structure of classifiers. I think this is mentioned in the article but so far I have only skimmed it. For example Arabic has “sun” and “moon” words. Japanese has a rich set. I have always thought of them as a kind of disambiguator to reduce semantic errors in listening. But really the question of “why” makes as little sense in linguistics as it does in evolution, as any structure is a combination of happenstance, just so, environment, and such.

I have read that affix discriminators (e.g. declining a noun) started off as standalone words. Could be true; the distinction of “word” feels to me like an artifact of writing.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#33

Post by culi »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #10

> Since my schooldays I have been listening patiently to claims that Latin and the Romance languages are inherently sexist because if you have a group of men and women, the adjectives will be masculine. This can be just as easily reversed. Imagine if instead we would use feminine gender for a mixed group and masculine gender only when the group is composed of men. Someone then might complain that this is sexist becau…

> If it were reverse (men were called "women") the same people would complain about sexism because the female version of the word is shorter

You're just making up hypothetical reactions by a group of people you clearly have some preconceived notions about...

The fact that the word "woman" is etymologically derived from the root word "man" can be, and has been, scientifically validated.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#34

Post by kkoncevicius »

culi wrote: post #33
kkoncevicius wrote: post #10

> Since my schooldays I have been listening patiently to claims that Latin and the Romance languages are inherently sexist because if you have a group of men and women, the adjectives will be masculine. This can be just as easily reversed. Imagine if instead we would use feminine gender for a mixed group and masculine gender only when the group is composed of men. Someone then might complain that this is sexist becau…

> If it were reverse (men were called "women") the same people would complain about sexism because the female version of the word is shorter You're just making up hypothetical reactions by a group of people you clearly have some preconceived notions about... The fact that the word "woman" is etymologically derived from the root word "man" can be, and has been, scientifically validated.

> The fact that the word "woman" is etymologically derived from the root word "man" can be, and has been, scientifically validated.

But this doesn't disagree with anything I've said.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#35

Post by foo_barrio »

packet_nerd wrote: post #28

The Sgaw Karen language from Thailand and Burma has a system of what I've always called classifiers, but reading this, it sounds like they might be properly called genders too? Everything is classified into one of a bunch of classifiers, where a bunch might be a few dozen? Maybe hundreds, I'm not sure. Some really common ones: Rational beings like people, God, angles, etc. = "gha" (but not spirits, demons, ghosts, et…

Is it used only for counting? Mandarin and other East Asian language have a classifier for counting. English uses counting classifier sometimes. For example, "paper" without a classifier in English refers to an official document or essay. For example "I have to write a paper" or "Do you have your papers?" otherwise you have to use "a sheet of paper", "some paper", "a pack of paper" etc. It's not exactly the same as the counting words in Mandarin but play a similar role in grammer.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#36

Post by kgeist »

bregma wrote: post #24
Kye wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there are any examples of this in languages from the many cultures past and present that always recognized more than two sex-derived genders.

English, for example, has two pronoun genders: animate and inanimate. The animate gender is further subdivided into two subgenders: masculine and feminine. Of course, none of this has anything to do with sex, unless you prefer to attempt reproduction with inanimate objects as many have instructed me to do using the imperative mood (literally "fuck it").

Slavic languages have both 3 classic genders and grammatical animacy for masculine. I.e. if you view an object as an inanimate object, it will have a slightly different declension in accusative compared to animate objects. But it only works for words of masculine gender.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#37

Post by vehemenz »

This was such a great read. I am not a linguist, let alone a philologist, but I had this thought.

The modern use of "gender" to mean social aspects of sex (or sex) and the historical use of "gender" to mean sex are still actively used. In a very real sense, these are exclusive and oppositional categories, so any ambiguous use of "gender" in contemporary English should be interpreted as auto-antonymal use. That is, depending on what the speaker means, their meaning could be interpreted in exactly the opposite way.

Auto-antonyms are rare in English, but the obvious ones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym#Examples) do not cause confusion. I would suggest that outside of specific professional settings—philosophy, biology, medicine, linguistics—"gender" is almost exclusively an auto-antonym. Perhaps this contributes to the nearly impossible discourse on the subject.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#38

Post by alexfrydl »

kkoncevicius wrote: post #15
animal_spirits wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is fair to think up hypothetical situations like these and use that as a basis for an ideology about sexism

It's just a simple test - if all permutations of some situation lead to the same outcome, then the outcome cannot be said to be caused by the situation.

If these “permutations” only exist inside of your own brain, that only proves something about you, not reality.

Really, none of the permutations exist. Very few women unironically care that the word “woman” has the word “man” inside it. You're making up things to be mad about.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#39

Post by kgeist »

culi wrote: post #25
retrac wrote: post #11

I dislike the term "gender" in linguistics. Many languages have grammatical gender that has nothing to do with masculine/feminine. "Noun class" gives the idea better. Noun classes in Indo-European and a couple other major language families happen to somewhat align with grammatical markers indicating animal/human sex. But it doesn't have to. Many languages make an animate/inanimate distinction. It is one of those myst…

It's worth pointing out that, in linguistics, grammatical gender can be seen as a specific type of noun class system. The term is mostly useful when talking about Indo-European languages where the feminine-masculine distinction is most prevalent It's also worth noting that grammatical gender evolves over time. Originally, most Indo-European languages had the three classes of feminine, masculine, and neuter. But, for…

>Originally, most Indo-European languages had the three classes of feminine, masculine, and neuter.

Early Proto-Indoeuropean is theorized to have 2 genders - animate/inanimate, but by the late PIE period it evolved to the classic three.

Re: Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

#40

Post by kgeist »

culi wrote: post #29
Kye wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there are any examples of this in languages from the many cultures past and present that always recognized more than two sex-derived genders.

Most languages with grammatical gender have a distinct third class which linguists usually call "neuter". Languages like French are somewhat unique in having lost that third gender It's important to note that neuter is distinct from "gender"-less nouns

I like the fact that in most languages with 3 genders, the word kid is neuter: German "das Kind", Slavic "ditia", Greek "teknon".

I guess that's because a child is not a fully developed man/woman, so it's assumed genderless.

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