Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!fs7.ece.cmu.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!uknet!festival!edcogsci!iad
From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Subject: Re: Gender in the world's languages
Message-ID: <D0z400.vK@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <787603010.AA02984@clone.his.com> <3csoj4$md2@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Date: Sat, 17 Dec 1994 21:07:09 GMT
Lines: 41

In article <3csoj4$md2@darkwing.uoregon.edu> delancey@darkwing.uoregon.edu (Scott C DeLancey) writes:
>Most Indo-European languages, except for the few like English that
>have lost it, have grammatical gender [...].

For the most part, the ones that have lost it have gone further than
English and have also given up the distinction between `he' and `she'.
I'm thinking of Persian (and some of its relatives) and Armenian here.
Then there's Bengali, which (I'm told) has English-style `natural' gender.

>There's no particular reason to think that speakers of languages like
>French, German, Russian, or Panjabi, that have grammatical gender,
>actually think of particular types of object in the world as being
>masculine or feminine simply because the noun that names them is
>grammatically masculine or feminine [...].

They do if it is anthropomorphised.  Why does Petrarch address Love
as _Signore_ `Lord', if not because _amore_ is masculine in Italian?
But for a Russian speaker a being named _Ljubov'_ has to be female.
Ditto for _Smert'_ `Death', for whom _he_ is not infrequently used
in English; if the noun is feminine, the scythe has to be borne by
a woman.  And so on.

Neuters tend to be regarded as masculine for the purpose of this game;
that's why the Sun is male in Slavic folklore.  The Bulgarian Moon used
to be male too (_mesec_), but apparently the speakers of the language
felt a need for a female Moon, so the feminine noun _mesechina_ was
derived.  Later the word _luna_ made an appearance, so now _mesec_
nearly always means `month' and _mesechina_ is obsolete.

Animals are not spared either.  The only Bulgarian word for `panther',
_pantera_, happens to be feminine.  For `bear' the default/generic word
is the feminine _mechka_ `(she-)bear', although _mechok_ `he-bear' also
exists.  When Sider Florin was working on the Bulgarian translation
of _The Jungle Book_, he thought that many agreement clashes could
be avoided if Bagheera and Baloo became female, and so they did.

-- 
`Release Jesus wi this mob hangin aroon?  Nae chance!'  (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk, iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,   Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House E113, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Pk Rd, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK
