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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Pronomial gender distinctions [was: Re: SF & Language - Minimums
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References: <01bc265a$a239f270$275ee8cd@sal9000> <5gs1es$o4k@netsrv2.spss.com> <E7Cy0D.26H@midway.uchicago.edu> <5gutbb$6v6@netsrv2.spss.com>
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 1997 18:18:46 GMT
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In article <5gutbb$6v6@netsrv2.spss.com>,
Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>In article <E7Cy0D.26H@midway.uchicago.edu>,
>Daniel von Brighoff <deb5@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>>Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> wrote:
>>>In article <E7B7BB.ADK@midway.uchicago.edu>,
>>>Daniel von Brighoff <deb5@midway.uchicago.edu> wrote:
>>>>Off hand, I can't think of *any* East Asian language with pronomial gender
>>>>distinctions.
>>>
>>>Wouldn't Japanese count?  (E.g. men use _boku_ or _ore_ for 'I', women
>>>use _anata_, etc.)
>>
>>Nope.  Women *can* say "boku" or "ore", they just sound very butch and
>>vulgar when they do so.  This is much different from, say, French, where
>>saying "lui" for "elle" is just plain ungrammatical.
>
>I've fired off a question to a gay French friend about this.  In the meantime,
>would you say the Japanese situation parallels English, where gays sometimes
>use 'feminine' pronouns?  

Not especially.  There's a whole lot more encoded into 'boku' or 'atashi'
than just gender.  As for French, whatever your amie gaie franc,oise might
tell you about his usage, there certainly *are* cases using "lui" for
"elle" is ungrammatical.  E.g. "*Cette jupe, comme il est jolie!"  I
suspect that using 'kanojo' to refer to a male or an inanimate object in
Japanese wouldn't be considered "ungrammatical", just highly  affective--
much as using 'she' in similar circumstances would be in English.  "My
computer, she's been an absolute darling of late!"  Can you say that in
French?

>(I suspect the pronoun issue alone is enough to give _Ranma 1/2_ a different
>feel in Japanese than in English.  The English version reads like it's about
>someone who's half-boy, half-girl.  In the original, however, since Ranma
>almost always uses male pronouns, I would think it'd be read as being about
>a boy who sometimes has a girl's body.)

What do you consider 'male' pronouns?  Does Ranma stick to 'boku' and
'kimi'?

>>Furthermore, some even argue that Japanese doesn't have any true pronouns,
>>but that's another matter altogether.
>
>What's a true pronoun?

Depends on the language.  For an argument that the category "pronoun"
cannot be descriptively reconstructed for Japanese, see Bart Matthias'
recent post.

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
