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Gender in Latin and Beyond: A Philologist’s Take

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

#101

Post by School-Cotton »

denton-scratch wrote: post #88
vehemenz wrote: post #37

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, de…

Auto-antonyms: "literally", meaning literally "not literally" (i.e. meaning figuratively). See M-W on "literally". If you don't already know what the word means, you won't find out from M-W. They define the word using the word itself; recursion is divine, but it's an impentrable tangle because they're defining that word recursively, while saying it means the opposite of itself. It's like self-modifying code. https://…

The colloquial meaning of “literally” isn’t quite “not literally”; it’s more of a generic intensifier.

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

#102

Post by brazzy »

telotortium wrote: post #69
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…

> I dislike the term "gender" in linguistics. Many languages have grammatical gender that has nothing to do with masculine/feminine. You realize that the use of gender for grammatical noun class is the original meaning of the word, correct? Gender comes from the Latin genus, generis (via Old French), which means type, kind, sort. The genders in Latin were called masculine, feminine, and neuter because one of the noun…

Um... From TFA:

When the Romans started to get interested in grammar, genus came to mean “kind” of noun or “gender”, but because genus could also refer to biological sex, male and female, these concepts were occasionally conflated.

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

#103

Post by kennywinker »

frenchyatwork wrote: post #61
kennywinker wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Completely out of line with the culture” firefighter, for a moment, was an exclusively male job. Fireman made sense. As more women took on that job during the past 50-ish years, calling them “firemen” makes less and less sense. So to say it’s people out of step with culture isn’t quite right. It’s more like entrenched language in conflict with shifting culture. A non-gendered example of this would be something like…

The problem here is not that "fireman" couldn't in theory be used to refer to both men and women; but that in English it doesn't, or at least not anymore. Historically, the masculine noun class has been used in gender-indeterminate places, but about 100 years ago that usage stared to disappear from the language, or at least become argot. The phrase "I am no man" in the Lord or the Rings is a play on this disappearanc…

Interesting. I was aware of the shift... In university I would cringe every time a prof said "man" to refer to human or humanity, which seemed to me to indicate a very recent change. It's a surprising thing to hear it started as far back as Tolkien's time - I remembered that line as a Peter Jackson addition.

It would be interesting to hear how women who speak other European languages that didn't make those changes feel about it - they seem so inherently linked to my ear.

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

#104

Post by Tagbert »

kgeist wrote: post #42
vehemenz wrote: post #37

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, de…

Here in Russian, the word for gender literally means "kind" or "genus", it's not related to gender/sex.

That is the origin of the word gender. It only relatively recently came to be applied to sexual roles and identity.

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

#105

Post by occamrazor »

retrac wrote: post #58
tsimionescu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't 'it' refer to both inanimate objects and animate objects (animals)? Or is 'inanimate' a kind of term of art here refering to humans and human-like beings (instead of the more common meaning of 'non-living')?

Yes, it's a linguistics term. Animate things are perceived as having human-like agency. Many languages have a grammatical category clustering things like large non-human animals, the weather, or fire, or trees, together with humans. Animate. Everything else is inanimate and presumably less alive. In English, many animals are referred to with "he" or "she". Being a mammal, large, being domesticated, being familiar, ar…

When I first learned English in school (almost 40 years ago) I was told that very young babies were grammatically neuter. Now I never hear anyone using “it” for a baby. Has English changed in the last decades, or was my teacher wrong?

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

#106

Post by denton-scratch »

School-Cotton wrote: post #101
denton-scratch wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto-antonyms: "literally", meaning literally "not literally" (i.e. meaning figuratively). See M-W on "literally". If you don't already know what the word means, you won't find out from M-W. They define the word using the word itself; recursion is divine, but it's an impentrable tangle because they're defining that word recursively, while saying it means the opposite of itself. It's like self-modifying code. https://…

The colloquial meaning of “literally” isn’t quite “not literally”; it’s more of a generic intensifier.

That's not what M-W says. They've gone the whole hog, and said that one meaning of "literally" is "not literally".

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

#107

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#108

Post by telotortium »

brazzy wrote: post #102
telotortium wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I dislike the term "gender" in linguistics. Many languages have grammatical gender that has nothing to do with masculine/feminine. You realize that the use of gender for grammatical noun class is the original meaning of the word, correct? Gender comes from the Latin genus, generis (via Old French), which means type, kind, sort. The genders in Latin were called masculine, feminine, and neuter because one of the noun…

Um... From TFA: When the Romans started to get interested in grammar, genus came to mean “kind” of noun or “gender”, but because genus could also refer to biological sex, male and female, these concepts were occasionally conflated.

Thanks for that - I didn't see that.

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

#109

Post by School-Cotton »

denton-scratch wrote: post #106
School-Cotton wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The colloquial meaning of “literally” isn’t quite “not literally”; it’s more of a generic intensifier.

That's not what M-W says. They've gone the whole hog, and said that one meaning of "literally" is "not literally".

Dictionaries are trailing a moving target and are not always perfectly accurate.

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

#110

Post by macdice »

Tagbert wrote: post #96
alexfrydl wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old English has the same gender system as German. The reason English doesn't have gendered nouns now isn't because we are so progressive, but because language tends to lose all its excess features as it gets spoken and a LOT of people speak English. Basically, people can't be bothered to do grammar properly so eventually it just goes away (see: “whom”). Also, English is not the language of gender progressives. Many c…

English lost it’s gender and most of it’s verb declensions as a result of the Norse occupation. The Norse occupied around half of Britain for several hundreds of years. Both Norse and English had these linguistic forms, but the specifics did not match and were confusing to the adult Norse trying to learn English. They adopted a simplified version and that spread among the population. The grammatical effect was strong…

I incorrectly assumed Norse and old English genders and cases ought to line up neatly and wouldn't have caused the whole system to be thrown out the window on contact. I stand corrected. Thanks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English#Decline_of_g...

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