Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site utah-gr.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!pwa-b!utah-gr!donn From: donn@utah-gr.UUCP (Donn Seeley) Newsgroups: net.women Subject: Re: Now is the time for all good men... Message-ID: <1468@utah-gr.UUCP> Date: Sat, 1-Jun-85 03:13:44 EDT Article-I.D.: utah-gr.1468 Posted: Sat Jun 1 03:13:44 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 3-Jun-85 00:30:00 EDT References: <738@oddjob.UUCP> <742@oddjob.UUCP> <367@h-sc1.UUCP> <5363@tekecs.UUCP> <269@spar.UUCP> Organization: University of Utah CS Dept Lines: 73 This little article seems to have generated an amazing amount of misunderstanding... From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) Is that so? Let's look at the two proposals more deeply... MALE FEMALE GENERIC 1) man woman person 2) ??? woman man I fear you have mislabeled Cheryl Stewart's categories -- I think she really intended to propose: MALE FEMALE GENERIC 1) man woman person 2) male man female man man (or equivalently) 3) male woman female woman woman When Cheryl was discussing aphorisms about 'men', she seemed to be arguing that alternative 2 is better than 3 because it doesn't involve rewriting a lot of books. I didn't gather that she was disparaging femininity or encouraging male stereotypes (except perhaps in jest) -- in fact a change that removed gender distinctions among nouns and pronouns (NOT adjectives, mind you) would break many stereotypes. All sayings that previously applied to 'men' would apply to both male and female men, while the sayings that applied to 'women' would have to change to refer to men instead, because 'women' would no longer be a word, and then the sayings would apply to both genders. It still amuses me that Americans seem to find it difficult to imagine a language that doesn't implicitly make gender distinctions... The Malay language works pretty much as Cheryl's revised English would -- 'orang' is the word used where 'person' and so-called 'generic "man"' are used in current English; 'man' and 'woman' are usually translated as 'orang laki-laki' and 'orang perempuan', literally 'male human being' and 'female human being'. No pronouns distinguish gender. Malay speakers don't seem to suffer from any deficit by not distinguishing gender in the way English does; the claim that lack of gender distinction leads to vague speech would get a laugh from a Malay. (A Malay would want to know how English speakers get along without distinguishing between first person inclusive and exclusive plurals -- English is just impossibly vague, don't you agree?) I picked Malay because I'm familiar with it, but I'm sure that vast numbers of non-Indo-European languages are similar to it with respect to gender. I've heard of at least one interesting use of gender distinctions that is similar to what Cheryl proposes. I'm told that in Samuel R. Delany's recent novel, STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND, 'gender' distinctions in pronouns (and nouns?) are subverted to represent distinctions in familiarity or intimacy. You use 'he' to refer to someone you know distantly, and 'she' to refer to someone you are a close friend or lover to, regardless of the actual sex of the person. (I may have the pronouns backwards, although it really doesn't matter as far as the discussion goes.) This is supposed to represent the usage of a future language which doesn't have pronouns which directly correspond to pronouns in current English. There already exist languages which distinguish intimacy in pronouns but not gender, so this strikes me as being an entirely reasonable pattern for English, although it probably takes some getting used to. Where are your imaginations, people? Cheers should go to Cheryl for showing some original thought. This message should not be construed as indicating that I take a position on the issue of the usefulness of applied linguistics :-), Donn Seeley Ex-Linguist (Linguist X?) donn@utah-cs.arpa 40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W (801) 581-5668 decvax!utah-cs!donn