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From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Subject: Re: International Language.
Message-ID: <D2LwAE.668@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK
References: <1995Jan8.181104.10649@midway.uchicago.edu> <3f78nd$g03@mother.usf.edu> <3feh4s$c69@scratchy.reed.edu>
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 1995 14:58:58 GMT
Lines: 110
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang.translation:763 sci.lang:34514

I'd like to recommend Greville Corbett's book _Gender_, specifically
Section 7.3, `Gender agreement with noun phrases involving reference
problems', which deals with these issues from a typological point of
view and without pursuing any political agenda.

In article <3feh4s$c69@scratchy.reed.edu> pproszyn@reed.edu (PCP - Piotr C. Proszynski) writes:
>In article <3f78nd$g03@mother.usf.edu>, Timothy Miller <millert@grad.csee.usf.edu> wrote:
>>Pardon me, but this is stupid.  There are male and female versions of the 
>>same thing.  The choice of which one to make the root is arbitrary.  
>
>Pardon me, but this is stupid. That the female is the marked case in 
>almost all languages where the distinction is made (I say "almost"
>though I'm not aware of exceptions knowing this group's tendency to
>come up with such :)

You're excused.  There are exceptions, but they are not widely known.
Corbett lists four languages, namely Maasai (Nilotic), Seneca (Iroquoian),
Goajiro (Arawakan) and Dama (Khoisan), in which the feminine is the
unmarked gender in some contexts (though not necessarily the same for
the four languages).  It's not an exhaustive list (see below), but it
comes reasonably close.

>certainly points to something other than just arbitrary assignement.

True.  What it points to is a more interesting question.  I wouldn't
put any money on the fact that Corbett's four languages are spoken by
societies ruled by women.  As we were reminded not so long ago, in
some Papuan languages (not on his list) the feminine plural is used to
refer to a mixed group, because any men who have fallen so low as to
associate with women are considered to have forfeited their gender.

>And anyway, are you 
>trying to suggest that the fact that female _isn't_ ever chosen as the 
>unmarked case to be comparable with a long string of "tails" flipping a 
>fair coin? Just a statistical fluke? I don't think the coin is fair.

No, the coin is not fair, but that doesn't make your apparent
expectation that it would stay in the air any more reasonable.

>No, I'm not saying that this issue (gender, that is), is in any
>_vital_ way responsible for sexual discrimantion, but I do think
>there is a link,

Numerous examples show that sexual `discrimantion' can work just as well,
if not better, in a society using a language without such a category.
In Klingon the symmetry is nothing short of perfect, but the Klingons
are known to treat their women as useful animals at best.  Okay, that's
not valid linguistic evidence, but the point is that Terran languages
and the associated societies have often worked and work in the same way.

>and if designing a language around a neutral case could in even a
>minor way alleviate the problem, I'd like to see it done.

Well, Volapu"k with its four overt sex markers (as in _hibub_ `bull',
_jibub_ `cow', _hobub_ `bull' and _jobub_ -- you get the idea) came
much closer to that than Esperanto with its unmarked male and marked
female does, but, as we see, Esperanto proved to be much more vital.

>Elsewhere in this thread the issue of gender-non-specific pronouns was 
>touched upon, replete with the customary complaints about PCness (I am 
>not responsible for my initials :), the destruction of English, the 
>grating sight of "he/she" and other neological monstrosities, fiendish 
>fluoridators, etc etc.

That's why I'm suggesting that people look at Corbett's book, which
shows that there is not a single example in the world of a language
which would have a gender-neutral pronoun in addition to a set of
gender-specific ones (the Zande _ni_, quoted there as the only
exception, appears to be indefinite rather than just gender-neutral).
So there seems to be a universal rule at work here, and what sounds to
you like `customary complaints about [...] the destruction of English'
may be the predictable aversion of the human language-processing unit
to artificial constructs which contradict the hard-wired grammar that
we're born with and that linguistics is trying to find out about.

Note that this is totally independent on the usefulness of a
gender-neutral pronoun.  If it is true that languages are learnable
etc. etc. because they share a number of universal features that forms
the basis for language acquisition, then any attempt to introduce a
feature which goes against those rules would be like trying to transplant
a pair of wings to a human being.  They might be useful, pretty and all,
but the organism will reject them as alien.

>I hope one day enough people will adopt some sort of 
>gender-non-specific pronouns to make it part of the language.

And I just expressed a hypothesis that this will never happen.
Let's see who is right.

>So, to get this back on topic - sci.lang (that means you), why is it that 
>relatively few bemoan the introduction of new lexical items if they 
>relate to, say, computers ("I efteepeed those files last night"),

Computers have nothing to do with it.  It's the category that matters
(the part of speech, if you prefer that term).

>but resist so strongly the idea of a new pronoun? Is it just a matter
>of degree, that is a continuum of resistance, or is there some fundamental 
>difference? HMM?

There is a fundamental difference, and a very simple one at that:
verbs are open-class words, whereas personal pronouns are closed-class,
and, as one might expect, it is open-class words that are open to
lexical innovation.

-- 
`Don't know whit ye're bletherin aboot', said Peter.    (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
