¡Descarga Gender & Language: Linking Sex, Gender & Grammatical Gender in English & Other Languages - y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! GENDER AND LANGUAGE Erica Sánchez Escobar Prácticas del Máster de Literatura y Lingüística Inglesas, 2009/2010 Sex versus gender Sex: either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structure. Gender: 1) It is a cultural or social construct that embraces the assumptions we attribute to a particular sex. 2) As a linguistic/grammatical feature, gender is a type of noun class system. Gender in Old English Old English nouns had “grammatical gender”. Three different sets of noun types: masculine, feminine and neuter. E.g.: paet wif (“the woman”) mōna (“moon”) In Old English, the gender of the corresponding pronouns, adjectives, articles, past participles is determined by the gender of the noun to which they refer. Examples in other languages Gender in Russian Gender in Arabic Gender in Polish Gender in Spanish Gender in Russian The forms of adjectives, pronouns, adjective-like words and past-tense forms of verbs depend on the gender of the noun they refer to. The grammatical gender is more or less related to the meaning of a word: nouns naming males are masculine; nouns naming females are feminine. Neuter nouns refer to nonliving objects and abstract notions. Only a small group of animate nouns are neuter; “child”, “animal”. Gender in Polish (1) Three categories: gender, personhood and animacy. Personhood and animacy only affect the masculine gender. The resulting system can be presented as comprising five gender classes: – 1. personal masculine – 2. animate (non-personal) masculine – 3. inanimate masculine – 4. feminine – 5. neuter Gender in Polish (2) The gender classification of masculine nouns does not always match up with their semantic reference. Grammatically animate nouns include nouns referring to inanimate entities (e.g. cukierek “candy”), as well as nouns used figuratively to refer to people (geniusz “genius”). In plural, personal masculine forms are used to refer to groups of males, or mixed groups of males and females. Gender in Spanish (1) Spanish nouns are either masculine or feminine. There is no neuter gender noun but some NPs can become identified as having a neuter referent (“lo oscuro”). Masculine nouns – article “el” in singular form and article “los” in plural – Ending: “-o” Feminine nouns – article “la” in singular form and article “las” in plural – Ending: “-a” Classification of gender in English ANIMATE, PERSONAL GENDER - Male Uncle/Father/Boy/King/Man Actor/Prince/Hero/God Pronouns: who/he E.g.: – The actor who won an Oscar last year was very glad. – The prince loves a young student. He is going to marry her very soon - Female Aunt/Mother/Girl/Queen/Woman Actress/Princess/Heroine/Goddess Pronouns: who/she E.g.: – My aunt, who gave me a present for Christmas, is very nice. – The girl was in the party. She was very pretty. Classification of gender in English - Dual cousin teenager teacher doctor cook student parent friend relative colleague partner leader E.g.: Mary is a doctor. She is a doctor Peter is a doctor. He is a doctor. Arthur is my cousin. He is my cousin. Jane is my cousin. She is my cousin - Common: E.g.: The baby is nice. It is happy Classification of gender in English Collective: noun that denotes a collection of persons or things regarded as one unit. E.g.: – The family was/were united on this question. – The enemy is/are suing for peace. In BrE, however, collective nouns are more often treated as plurals: E.g.: – The government have not announced a new policy – The team are playing in the tennis matches next week. Classification of gender in English In some cases nouns describing things are given feminine or masculine gender. E.g.: -I like my PC. He is very intelligent. -I love my car. She is my greatest passion. -France is popular with her neighbours at the moment. -I travelled from England to New York on the Queen Elizabeth. She is a great ship. Exercises EXERCISE 1 Change the nouns in bold from feminine to masculine. 1. My aunt visits her niece every week-end. 2. The lady has several mares on her farm. 3. The daughter is more talkative than her mother. 4. Does any actress like to play the role of the princess? 5. Their queen is a widow. 6. The manageress is still a spinster. 7. In the movie, the tigress was killed by the heroine. 8. His daughter-in-law is a postmistress. 9. The countess has one sister. 10. The authoress is writing a book about the empress. Exercises EXERCISE 2 Identify anaphoric and cataphoric referents in the following text. Then identify the gender of the NPs you find in this text. (From BBC, British Council 2006) The meeting The meeting was interesting. Mr Wong invited me to The Italian Kitchen at The Quay. When we arrived to the place, Mr Wong and I ordered some drinks. Soon after we asked for the menu, he said he wished to get straight to the point and asked what I thought about the new factory project. I hinted that I thought it was located in the wrong place and asked him if he had considered moving it to Shanghai. There, he could achieve greater success. He agreed that that would be a better idea. Mr Wong was very happy for having made that decision and he started to arrange things in order to move as soon as he could. Gender Gender
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