3 ms·

What is the purpose of specific, separate pronouns in speech to begin with? It's clear they arose in languages hundreds or thousands of years before any current

What is the purpose of specific, separate pronouns in speech to begin with? It's clear they arose in languages hundreds or thousands of years before any current understandings or politics of how and when they are "supposed" to be used. I do have some ideas why but I don't think it's relevant to bring them up outright, I just think the question should be pondered on.

kinghajj 8y ago
From a utilitarian perspective, it makes sense why a society would want a quick and simple way to disambiguate between two common categories. When talking about a heterosexual couple, one could say "he gave her", and the meaning of the statement is immediately understood. An alternative might be to have general reusable pronouns that can be reassigned, but that requires additional setup ("Jeff is ze, Stacy is xe", then the main clause, "ze gave xem".)
wrs 8y ago
In many Latin languages all nouns have genders, which surely never made sense, but here we are thousands of years later. French speakers: is there some process under way to address this? Given that the word “doctor” itself is masculine, is that inherent bias disturbing to people?
- kinghajj 8y ago
  Grammatical gender is an unfortunately-named construct that has little to do with sociological gender. The main connection is that most common words have grammatical genders matching their sociological one ("der Vater," "die Mutter"), but even that doesn't hold very well ("das Mädchen"). There's an interesting theory that grammatical gender helps reduce ambiguity, because the inflections of surrounding words make it clearer which roots they modify.
  - wrs 8y ago
    Sure, it’s not literally that objects have a gender, and it is an extra bit of redundant information that probably helps with intelligibility. But even though “he” is the generic first person pronoun in English and doesn’t literally mean a male person when used that way, you can’t avoid the connotations, which is where the controversy arises. I’m imagining a similar effect with noun genders — they aren’t called “noun type A” and “noun type B”, they are known as masculine and feminine, and things that literally are masculine and feminine can use the same mechanism. E.g., a generic dog in French is masculine (le chien), but if I want to communicate that I have a female dog it’s acceptable to make up a feminine form (la chienne). Thus, noun genders are not quite arbitrary; they can be used to communicate actual genders, so do they not have some small connotation at all times?
    - gizmo686 8y ago
      Linguists do refer to "gender" as "noun class". In languages where noun classes happen to align with gender, reffering to them as gender has stuck around. It is true that noun classes tend to make a gender distinction, so there is likely something innate in human language about that.
  - FeteCommuniste 8y ago
    Originally Indoeuropean had two noun classes, animate and inanimate, which did correspond to the meaning of words. The genders we know today evolved from those.
- FeteCommuniste 8y ago
  Feminisation of words for professions has been going on for a while now in French. Either a new word consistent with French rules is made (e.g. "docteure") or the feminine article is simply used in front of the same word ("madame la ministre"). There is also a broader "écriture inclusive" (inclusive writing) movement militating against things like defaulting to masculine forms of plural nouns and adjectives for groups of people of indeterminate sex, but that is less popular so far.
  - wrs 8y ago
    Thats not the issue, though — it isn’t that there’s no word for a female doctor. If you know someone’s male, in English everyone’s happy to use “he” (I think). The issue at hand is that there’s no word for a doctor of unknown gender. What does the inclusive writing movement suggest one should do in this case? In English, only the pronouns are concerned, so you can advocate using a different pronoun, but in French the genders of nouns have more pervasive effects.
    - FeteCommuniste 8y ago
      It depends on the person you ask. Some propose using parentheses (docteur(e)), others using a dot (docteur.e), still others writing out both words (docteur ou docteure). Articles on slate.fr use that last convention.
      - wrs 8y ago
        I’m only a beginner in French, but doesn’t this syntax explode because of the other gender implications? Do you have to write things like “l(e/a) docteur(e) est grand(e)” or “L’histoire d(u/e la) docteur(e)”? And how does this work in speech?
        FeteCommuniste 8y ago
        You're right that it can get pretty clumsy and you can end up with parentheses all over the place. Paraphrasing to avoid it can only help so much. In speech the only feasible solution is to use both forms, separated by "ou" or "et" according to the meaning you want ("les étudiants et étudiantes"). Some advocate using the "rule of proximity," which means that the adjective accords with the noun that is closest to it. So, "les hommes et les femmes sont belles," whereas traditionally the adjective would be "beaux."

kinghajj 8y ago

From a utilitarian perspective, it makes sense why a society would want a quick and simple way to disambiguate between two common categories. When talking about a heterosexual couple, one could say "he gave her", and the meaning of the statement is immediately understood. An alternative might be to have general reusable pronouns that can be reassigned, but that requires additional setup ("Jeff is ze, Stacy is xe", then the main clause, "ze gave xem".)

wrs 8y ago

In many Latin languages all nouns have genders, which surely never made sense, but here we are thousands of years later. French speakers: is there some process under way to address this? Given that the word “doctor” itself is masculine, is that inherent bias disturbing to people?

kinghajj 8y ago
Grammatical gender is an unfortunately-named construct that has little to do with sociological gender. The main connection is that most common words have grammatical genders matching their sociological one ("der Vater," "die Mutter"), but even that doesn't hold very well ("das Mädchen"). There's an interesting theory that grammatical gender helps reduce ambiguity, because the inflections of surrounding words make it clearer which roots they modify.
- wrs 8y ago
  Sure, it’s not literally that objects have a gender, and it is an extra bit of redundant information that probably helps with intelligibility. But even though “he” is the generic first person pronoun in English and doesn’t literally mean a male person when used that way, you can’t avoid the connotations, which is where the controversy arises. I’m imagining a similar effect with noun genders — they aren’t called “noun type A” and “noun type B”, they are known as masculine and feminine, and things that literally are masculine and feminine can use the same mechanism. E.g., a generic dog in French is masculine (le chien), but if I want to communicate that I have a female dog it’s acceptable to make up a feminine form (la chienne). Thus, noun genders are not quite arbitrary; they can be used to communicate actual genders, so do they not have some small connotation at all times?
  - gizmo686 8y ago
    Linguists do refer to "gender" as "noun class". In languages where noun classes happen to align with gender, reffering to them as gender has stuck around. It is true that noun classes tend to make a gender distinction, so there is likely something innate in human language about that.
- FeteCommuniste 8y ago
  Originally Indoeuropean had two noun classes, animate and inanimate, which did correspond to the meaning of words. The genders we know today evolved from those.
FeteCommuniste 8y ago
Feminisation of words for professions has been going on for a while now in French. Either a new word consistent with French rules is made (e.g. "docteure") or the feminine article is simply used in front of the same word ("madame la ministre"). There is also a broader "écriture inclusive" (inclusive writing) movement militating against things like defaulting to masculine forms of plural nouns and adjectives for groups of people of indeterminate sex, but that is less popular so far.
- wrs 8y ago
  Thats not the issue, though — it isn’t that there’s no word for a female doctor. If you know someone’s male, in English everyone’s happy to use “he” (I think). The issue at hand is that there’s no word for a doctor of unknown gender. What does the inclusive writing movement suggest one should do in this case? In English, only the pronouns are concerned, so you can advocate using a different pronoun, but in French the genders of nouns have more pervasive effects.
  - FeteCommuniste 8y ago
    It depends on the person you ask. Some propose using parentheses (docteur(e)), others using a dot (docteur.e), still others writing out both words (docteur ou docteure). Articles on slate.fr use that last convention.
    - wrs 8y ago
      I’m only a beginner in French, but doesn’t this syntax explode because of the other gender implications? Do you have to write things like “l(e/a) docteur(e) est grand(e)” or “L’histoire d(u/e la) docteur(e)”? And how does this work in speech?
      - FeteCommuniste 8y ago
        You're right that it can get pretty clumsy and you can end up with parentheses all over the place. Paraphrasing to avoid it can only help so much. In speech the only feasible solution is to use both forms, separated by "ou" or "et" according to the meaning you want ("les étudiants et étudiantes"). Some advocate using the "rule of proximity," which means that the adjective accords with the noun that is closest to it. So, "les hommes et les femmes sont belles," whereas traditionally the adjective would be "beaux."