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From: rob@ptsfb.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: net.books,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Gender distinctions
Message-ID: <928@ptsfb.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 26-Oct-86 23:28:24 EST
Article-I.D.: ptsfb.928
Posted: Sun Oct 26 23:28:24 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 27-Oct-86 22:22:30 EST
References: <16227@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <2177@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU> <8224@watrose.UUCP>
Reply-To: rob@ptsfb.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 28
Keywords: English has them too
Xref: mnetor net.books:2768 sci.lang:64

In article <8224@watrose.UUCP> cctimar@watrose.UUCP (Cary Timar) writes:
>I don't think that gender distinctions are a yes/no characteristic of
>languages.  The question is when and how a language distinguishes gender.

We must keep in mind that "gender" can be used in two different senses.

1. In one sense, gender is a property of the object being referred
to. With the exception of referring to ships and boats as "she", this is
the only gender English has. "he/him/his" is used for male animate objects,
and "she/her/hers" is used for female animate objects. This means that
gender is not really a grammatical feature of the language, but only shows
up in the *semantics* of third person pronouns (at least only there in 
English). This is a semantic issue just as much as having separate words
for female parent and male parent, or having separate words for people
of different ages (baby, child, boy/girl, man/woman).

2. In the other sense, gender is a property of a (noun) *word*, and
not *necessarily* reflecting the biological gender of the referent.
A great example occurs in Russian, where there is the *grammatically*
"feminine" word sobaka meaning "hound" and the *grammatically* "masculine"
word pyos meaning "dog". One is called "feminine" because it takes
the set of endings that other "feminine" nouns take, and because
a adjective that modifies this nound must have the feminine endings.
The other is called masculine for the opposite reason.
-- 
Rob Bernardo, San Ramon, CA        "Whenever I get the urge to work,
(415) 823-2417                      I log in and read the netnews
{pyramid|ihnp4|dual}!ptsfa!rob      until the feeling passes."