Questions tagged [gender]
A system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words.
63
questions
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1answer
60 views
Why is research on grammatical gender important?
I was wondering why is research on grammatical gender important? Why is exploring this area of linguistics of any interest to linguists? What can it tell us about language (especially with regards to ...
4
votes
1answer
118 views
Do any languages/cultures other than English apply non-grammatical gender to ships?
In the English language (or maybe in English-speaking cultures?) it's common to use feminine pronouns to refer to ships (and occasionally to other types of vehicles).
Are there any other languages/...
2
votes
1answer
79 views
How were this feminine mutations originated in Welsh?
It is known that the celtic languages have mutations, for instance:
Welsh:
*transcription depicts North Welsh dialects
• normal form: Cymru [ˈkəmrɨ̞] (Wales);
• soft mutation: Gymru [ˈɡəmrɨ̞] (ex.:...
0
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0answers
37 views
in search of nouns with a mismatch between morphological and semantic gender [duplicate]
I am currently trying to identify nouns whose morphological gender differs from their semantic gender. Here are three examples I could identify so far:
French: Le laideron - masculine morpho-...
2
votes
0answers
91 views
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and Gender Identity: Empirical Studies?
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states, briefly put, that linguistic structures affect cognitive processes. I am interested in finding out how much is known about the development of gender identity from ...
5
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6answers
398 views
Languages with masculine nouns for various female entities, or feminine nouns for male entities
This is not an area I'm familiar with, so if any of the following description/discussion is misguided, I apologise in advance:
In languages with gendered nouns, the nouns for woman and man are ...
6
votes
2answers
457 views
Are there languages that inflect adverbs for gender
Triggered by this answer, I am curious: Are there languages that inflect adverbs for gender or noun class?
I have consulted the following two questions but the given inflections of adverbs in their ...
5
votes
2answers
618 views
Why has the neuter gender disappeared from almost all the modern Roman languages?
Why has the neuter gender disappeared from almost all the modern Roman languages? It was completely common in Latin.
And when exactly did this happen? Did it happen in Latin itself, or only after ...
1
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2answers
57 views
Can the need for ambiguity lead to merge of grammatical person, or other semantic merge?
My mother tongue doesn't distinguish 3.SG.F and 3.SG.M in speech. In some cases I feel the redundancy of it and the need for ambiguity of the grammatical person when I speak a language which ...
3
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1answer
97 views
Correlation between pronunciation of given names and gender
In a number of major Western European languages, there are some fairly straighforward correlations between the pronunciation of given names and the biological gender these names are assigned to. E.g. ...
14
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5answers
3k views
In romance languages, are there examples of male names that derive from female names?
In french, there are many female given names that are derived from male given names. Those names are often obtained by adding "ine", "ette", "e" or "a" at the end of the male name. Examples include
...
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0answers
118 views
Is Italian the only modern language that uses the feminine 3rd person singular pronoun for formal speech?
Is Italian the only modern language that uses the feminine 3rd person singular pronoun (Lei) for formal speech, regardless of the gender of the 2nd person singular addressee?
cf. T–V_distinction#...
0
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2answers
312 views
Common gender in Swedish and gender equality
I study Swedish and I have a question. I know ancient grammatical masculine and femenine gender fused into one ("common gender") at some point in time, but I was wondering...
They say that the ...
0
votes
1answer
436 views
Are there any natural languages that actually have gender neutral 3rd person pronouns? [duplicate]
You see this a lot in the auxlang movement that having gendered pronouns is sexist.
But making conlangs of my own, I find its absence to be often annoying. No one seems to realize how useful it is to ...
1
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0answers
75 views
Feminine and neuter plural
The Indo-European feminine declension looks like the neuter plural. The usual explanation seems to be that feminine evolved out of an earlier inanimate collective but the semantics doesn't seem to be ...
3
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4answers
634 views
Why did English “man” and Latin “homo” take both the senses “gender-neutral human” and “male adult”?
Why did English "man" and Latin "homo" take both the sense "gender-neutral human" and "male adult"?
According to etymonline.com, English "man", and incidentally Latin "homo" (which originally meant "...
3
votes
3answers
166 views
Do speakers of languages that use gendered nouns automatically use the same gendered pronouns when referring to an animal as Mr. or Mrs.?
I know this is sort of a silly question, but the other day when walking in the park, I saw a squirrel and said, "Hello, Mr. Squirrel". I know for me, my choice of Mr. over Mrs. was random, or at least ...
4
votes
2answers
2k views
Is English the only Indo-European language without gendered nouns?
One of the quirks of English is that it does not have gendered nouns.
Are there other languages in the Indo-European family that have also lost this feature?
1
vote
2answers
191 views
Do english-speaking people feel grammatical gender of words like “California” or “America” being feminine and “New York” being masculine?
Do english-speaking people feel grammatical gender of words like "California" or "America" being feminine and "New York" being masculine?
Many of geographical names are obviously came from languages ...
0
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0answers
33 views
How do I report the distribution of a variant among genders?
Just a quick question as I'm slightly confused
If I want to report the use of e.g. [t] among males and females, in a graph, would the percentages be worked out as follows:
males/ all tokens ...
3
votes
1answer
226 views
Does plural count as a grammatical gender?
Depending on the language, gender inflection can arise from natural gender, or even perhaps as a way of simplifying an extremely complex inflection system, but regardless, grammatical gender is a just ...
7
votes
2answers
174 views
Why are definite articles generally used for learning gendered languages?
I'll take spanish for my example, but it's also true for French an Italian.
In order to remember the gender of nouns, they are almost always found with an article. It's often a definite article. I've ...
1
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1answer
226 views
How to convert masculine Old Norse dwarf names to feminine markers?
I'm wondering how to convert the Old Norse names from the "Catalog of Dwarfs" in the Völuspá into their feminine version? So that they look phonetically female.
For example:
Fíli > Fíla
Kíli > Kíla
...
2
votes
0answers
62 views
As of July 2016, is there any new improved research on predicting French grammatical gender?
Please advise me if there are better research methods; I only searched for Related Articles on Google Scholar to the only 2 recent papers that I know:
Cited Articles of French gender assignment ...
2
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0answers
126 views
Are there any good individualistic measures of linguistic conservatism?
I am currently examining how differing levels of genderisation across languages (French, Finnish, and Norwegian) affects self-perception and the social perception of others through the utilisation of ...
3
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2answers
3k views
Why do most languages have multiple genders? Also, how do languages determine what gender to give things?
In many languages (unlike English) if translated literally, you would have people saying "the masculine case X," "the feminine case that," or "the neuter case this other." To make things even more ...
2
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1answer
1k views
Languages with only a gender-neutral word for aunt/uncle
English has the words brother and sister, but then we also have the word sibling as a gender-neutral version. We have the words aunt and uncle as well, but no gender-neutral version. What languages ...
6
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3answers
419 views
Who was the first to call noun classes “genders”?
I'm not asking about the origin of grammatical gender. I am asking where is the earliest example of the term "gender" used to describe classes of nouns. I'm wondering who first decided to name ...
2
votes
1answer
548 views
How and when do French children learn to select between masculine and feminine forms of words when referring to themselves?
I am interested in what knowledge we have regarding the process by which a young child acquiring French as a first language learns to choose correctly between the masculine and feminine forms of ...
1
vote
1answer
314 views
Does Swedish always had common and neuter genders?
Exactly as stated in the title. I wonder if it always been that way or it is some modern concept to enforce gender equality?
2
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3answers
389 views
Is there any language in which the gender of the subject/object is marked in every verb conjugation?
Besides Spanish where you have comerla (feminine, eat her) or comerlo (masculine, eat him), but only works for certain verb conjugations.
Any other language where the gender of objects/subjects is ...
3
votes
1answer
156 views
What's a good source to say if a word is masculine or feminine in Sanskrit?
I trying to write a few verses and knowing the gender might change the meaning. A good source to Sanskrit grammar would also be accepted!
6
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3answers
652 views
Why do languages have gendered nouns?
Why do languages have gendered nouns? What are the problems that are solved by having gendered nouns?
13
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2answers
485 views
How stable are grammatical genders?
In languages which have gender-like classifications for nouns, like French and Russian, how often do nouns change gender over time? Have any studies been done to get statistics on how many words have ...
7
votes
1answer
222 views
Why do many French and Spanish noun cognates have opposing grammatical gender?
While most French/Spanish noun cognates share the same gender (both descending from the same vulgar latin root), there are many exceptions having opposing genders (e.g. la couleur / el color; la ...
11
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3answers
2k views
Is there a language in which feminine is the unmarked gender?
In English and every language I speak or know well, masculine gender is unmarked, and feminine is marked, for any human referent. Is there any known language where this is the other way around? (Take ...
2
votes
2answers
323 views
Origins of gender distinction in verbs in Slavic
This is a thing that I have been thinking about for a while. I know that PIE did not have gender distinction in verb forms, and its presence in modern Slavic languages must be an innovation.
If I am ...
5
votes
2answers
907 views
Why in most (all?) languages don't adjectives have gender independently of the nouns they modify?
In many languages where nouns have gender, adjectives agree in gender with the nouns they modify. But it would be possible to imagine a language where each adjective had its own gender, which it kept ...
7
votes
2answers
380 views
Has grammatical gender ever been observed to emerge in a language that previously had none?
Does a language exist whose older forms are known to have lacked the category of grammatical gender, and which proceeded to evolve one (perhaps from a non-gender-based system of noun classes)? Are "...
6
votes
5answers
10k views
Is there a name for a word which can take both genders?
For languages with two genders, is there a name for a noun (or pronoun, adjective, etc) which can be of either gender?
This seems to be quite common for names of professions, for instance, in Latin ...
3
votes
2answers
169 views
Do Persian Adjectives have Masc. Fem. and Neuter forms
For adjectives in Farsi (Persian), do they have Masculine, Feminine, and Neuter.
For Example:
The adjective خوب (Khoob, meaning good), does it have different forms, like in French or Russian?
...
6
votes
3answers
600 views
How does the reaction against gender-specific pronouns relate to a languages' use of gender?
This is a question out of gross ignorance, so I may be way off the mark here. If that's the case, the answer should be easy to provide in the negative.
My background
I'm an American, I spent the first ...
2
votes
1answer
144 views
Possessive determiner depending on grammatical gender of owner
Consider possessive determiners when the owner is a third person.
In many languages, the determiner depends on the natural gender of the speaker (English: he-she-it) or, in languages with grammatical ...
1
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3answers
349 views
Which languages have three noun classes corresponding to men, women and a third gender?
Which languages have three noun classes corresponding to men, women and a third gender? Where can I find lists like this?
5
votes
2answers
679 views
Gender-specific pronouns in languages without grammatical gender?
There are various discussions, also on SE network, about the usage of "gender-neutral" language, where most controversies arise around using the pronoun "he" to address any user.
Such problems are ...
25
votes
16answers
12k views
Is there a language without gender in third person pronouns?
English (as most Indo-European languages) has a gender-neutral third person pronoun, it, but it is typically not used for people; if one wants to be gender neutral, one is often stuck using he or she.
...
1
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1answer
202 views
Gender/tone sandhi in [classical] Tibetan grammar?
Tibetan alphabet is a kind of abugida where glyphs may combine into new different forms, taking different positions in their combinations according to their types (see H.B. Hannah, pp. 16- 45).
Each ...
2
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0answers
43 views
Looking for books etc on gender animacy in Oromo
I request you if you are willing and able to help me on my linguistics thesis with the title of The morphosyntax of gender animacy and clitics in Oromo.
Oromo is one of the Cushitic branch languages ...
0
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1answer
891 views
Importance of Genders in English Nouns
I am looking at teaching a computer about grammar which could turn into teaching it sentence analysis and eventually how to formulate a response.
This is the baby steps. I am defining a noun. So far ...
2
votes
2answers
528 views
How does language produce identities?
I've come to understand that language plays a central role in producing political identities such as "black", "white"; "man", "woman", "genderqueer"; "heterosexual", "queer". How exactly does language ...
