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macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 3957 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
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Author | Topic: in case anyone was curious. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 3957 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
this is a short-lived little topic regarding the origin of gender in languages. i know it's a pain to bring this old topic back up, but it's interesting.
i emailed a professor at oxford since the internet and my myriad books (restricted to french) proved useless in uncovering where gendered words came from. his answer? gender was assigned to onjects in latin and this held over after its usefulness had passed. words in derivitive romance languages do not reflect any specific idea of gencer as related to objects (books are not male, cars are not female) and seem to not in latin either. in fact, the same word may take different genders depending on tense. here's the actual email.
Your question is an excellent one, and one that I have asked myself often. But there just isn't a really satisfying answer beyond the fact that it's a matter of historical inheritance from Latin. In remote linguistic history, before Latin existed, and in its ancestor language, there was a semantically-based distinction between animate and inanimate (or 'neuter'). Later on, 'animate' acquired a distinction between male and female, again originally motivated by the 'sex' of the referent. But this system rapidly became 'grammaticalized' or 'lexicalized' (in the sense that the gender of a word is largely a matter of convention). In Latin - a free word order language - gender agreement between nouns and adjectives or pronouns may have helped to 'keep track' of the relations between words even if they were not adjacent to each other. But the more rigid word order of Romance makes this less advantageous. Romance languages could do without gender, but it's a matter of historical inheritance. Some, indeed, behave very strangely in this respect: in Romanian for example thousands of words are masculine in the singular but feminine in the plural! In some languages (e.g., Italian) differences of gender are also correlated with such things as 'size' (where, surprisingly, feminines are larger than masculines), and so forth. I could go on ad nauseam, but if you want to know more let me know. This message has been edited by brennakimi, 04-13-2005 09:08 AM
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contracycle Inactive Member |
Sounds implausible to me, I'm afraid. I seemed to recall this was a feature of Indo-European languages.
Wikipedia provides:
quote: Maybe there's a role for us proles in the juries yet, eh? This message has been edited by contracycle, 04-13-2005 09:57 AM
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
I was used to thinking that "genders" in the Indo-European languages really had to have something to do with social gender roles. When I learned Swahili, I realized that its 7 noun classes were functionally exactly the same as "gender" but were completely divorced from social gender roles. That sort of led to some insight into my own language.
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jar Member (Idle past 424 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Why in Latin the terms Cat house and House cat are interchangeable.
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
Sounds implausible to me, I'm afraid. I seemed to recall this was a feature of Indo-European languages. not to make an argument of authority, but you do realize you're debating the answer given by a oxford professor of french, right? and citing wikipedia to refute it.
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Monk Member (Idle past 3954 days) Posts: 782 From: Kansas, USA Joined: |
quote: It is interesting and is something I was only vaguely aware of because English is my first and only language. Thanks for bringing it up.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
it's only a pain because of the older topics, which both got closed, and got two members suspended... i'm sure it's bound to fire up again any second now.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Sure. But in this case, the professor is wrong. It happens. Thats why appeals to authority are unreliable.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
wikipedia, vs oxford professor.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Embarrasing, isn't it? Moral of the story: get out of the ivory tower. Facts count, sinecure does not.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
tell me, how many of these deal specifically with french?
quote: is that... ? wow! none of them! now, do you think these sources are more or less credible regarding french than some who's made their career teaching and studying french specifically, at possibly THE most prestigous university in the world? let's look at HOW stuff gets in wikipedia. this is a good thing to remember.
quote: wanna watch me make the site say something different? how credible as a journal is something if anyone can make changes to it? how do i know you didn't do that just to prove your point above? i don't, and i can't.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: the question was not about French - it was about the existance of gendered nouns. Look, I don not understand what your issue is, nor why Shrafinataor frex is making snide remarks about Wikipedia. If you find it that much more convincing, I will call over to my freindly neighbourhood linguist*, Joe, with whom I shared a house for 4 years, and have him confirm to me again that Indo-European languages had gendered words that vastly preceeded the existance of Latin, let alone French. Nobody has challenged the substance of the Wikipedia article, I note. Are you all speaking from ignorance or what? Sanskrit has gendered words - that is simply a fact. You could look it up yourself, you know. The professor was mistaken. Deal with it, and quit the unqalified worship of Academia, as it appears that your opposition is purely based upon the fact that I relied on my own knowledge and was not intimidated by the letters behind the name of Brenna's friend. * Also Oxford trained, for your information. This message has been edited by contracycle, 04-20-2005 04:05 AM
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
All of the Indo-European languages either have gendered nouns or are descended from earlier, attested languages that have gendered nouns. This includes languages that not only were not descended from Latin, but had no contact with Latin during their early formation. Sorry, but it is a fact that gendered nouns go way, way back in the history of the Indo-European languages -- probably all the way back to Proto-Indo-European itself.
Edited to add:I just reread the OP. It appears that the question is why there are genders in the French language specifically. In that case, the reply that they serve no real purpose, but are holdovers in the ancestral Latin language is correct and appropriate. In fact, the professor of French does point out that gender arose before Latin. My apologies. Now, back to the regularly schedule off-topic: the relative merits of an Oxford professor vs. Wikipedia. This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 04-20-2005 10:48 AM
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
the question was not about French - it was about the existance of gendered nouns. actually, the question that spawned this thread was regarding french in specific, and above it was generalized to romance languages. the question was where gendered nouns came from in french, and the answer was that it was a holdover from latin, and not applied in a way that makes a statement about the social gender-role of the object. the wikipedia article does not refute that.
If you find it that much more convincing, I will call over to my freindly neighbourhood linguist*, Joe, with whom I shared a house for 4 years, and have him confirm to me again that Indo-European languages had gendered words that vastly preceeded the existance of Latin, let alone French. * Also Oxford trained, for your information. hi, welcome to the thread. that was point, and the gist of the above quote. can we drop this now?
Nobody has challenged the substance of the Wikipedia article, I note. Are you all speaking from ignorance or what? Sanskrit has gendered words - that is simply a fact. You could look it up yourself, you know. yes, and we were asking about romance languages in particular, as an example. if you want, we'll talk about sanskrit. i know A LOT of languages have gendered nouns. some even have gendered verbs. heck, thai even has gendered DIALECTS. women and men speak slightly differently. the question was "why?" not "does it happen?"
The professor was mistaken. *cough* evidence, please.
Deal with it, and quit the unqalified worship of Academia, as it appears that your opposition is purely based upon the fact that I relied on my own knowledge and was not intimidated by the letters behind the name of Brenna's friend. oh, the irony.
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arachnophilia Member (Idle past 1373 days) Posts: 9069 From: god's waiting room Joined: |
I just reread the OP. It appears that the question is why there are genders in the French language specifically. In that case, the reply that they serve no real purpose, but are holdovers in the ancestral Latin language is correct and appropriate. In fact, the professor of French does point out that gender arose before Latin. EXACTLY. i don't know what the big deal is here.
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