ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (05/21/85)
>> I postulate the following theory: The use of the word 'he' as the gender >> neutral pronoun came into use because the male was considered more >> 'typical' of the species, not to mention more important -marie desjardins > > An intriguing hypothesis, unfortunately marred by a couple of flaws: > > - In German, the word "sie" stands for both "she" and "they". Perhaps > German males were considered atypical of the species? Or less > important? > - In many Arabian- and Sanskrit-based languages, there _is_ no gender- > specific pronoun (Bengali, for example, has one third-person singular > pronoun, which is gender-neutral). Believe me, these societies consider > their males to be more important! -- Saumya Debray It's hard to understand why such seemingly obvious theories as Marie's are shot down by such lame arguments as Saumya offers, especially in light of the huge quantity of data in her favor. Must be due to the compulsive knee-jerk conservatism of the male majority around here. Most languages I know, when forced to select a general term from a male/female pair, have typically selected the male version, except when the female is nonhuman, where the choice seems random: MALE FEMALE GENERIC English: man woman man he she he bull cow cow <-exception Latin: good person bonus bona bonus good people boni bonae boni Greek: wise person sophos sophe sophos wise people sophoi sophai sophoi Every IndoEuropean language I've seen with adjective gender distinctions followed the convention that masculine is to be used when referring to mixed group of people, as well as when referring to an individual of unknown sex. Ditto for pronouns. The fact that Bengali (like English) has lost gender distinctions only excludes this language from those that might have any bearing on Marie's hypothesis. And the German example is invalid as well -- not only does sie=they not correspond to the generic singular (it's a plural, right?), it does not derive from sie=she (though they probably are related...): OLD HIGH GERMAN MODERN GERMAN `she' 'they' 'she' 'they' N siu si[e,o] sie sie G ira iro [ihr] [ihr] D iru im ihr ihnen A sia si[e,o] sie sie Furthermore, as someone previously pointed out, `sie=they' is additionally differentiated by the verbal inflexion. Were they really the same word, one would not expect the verb to change. ============================================================================== >You have made a similar proposal before, in arguing for a singular 'they' as >an orthogonal, one-for-one replacement for 'he' -- Marcel Yes. And I will continue to encourage such use. It's a disgrace that nonsexist language should receive such harrassment in this newsgroup. For instance: >On the use of ``their'' as a singular, replying to an article in which I >said that if ``their'' is used as a singular form, we should use it in a singular context: > >>Why? There is precedent for having singular/plural mixed. Which do >>you prefer: >> >> I'm a lover, not a fighter. Which is you? >> I'm a lover, not a fighter. Which are you? >>-- Ed Gould > >For your crimes, you are sentenced to study net.nlang.fundementals for six >months! The singular ``you'' is a second person pronoun and takes a SINGULAR >SECOND PERSON ``are''. > >Clear? -- Mark Terribile (scrape .. dig ) Apparently you entirely misunderstood Ed's remark. He was politely answering your original ignorant suggestion that people should say `they is' when the referrent is singular. Historically, `you are' is a plural form that has displaced the singular `thou art', much as it appears `they are' may displace `he is' in the generic usage. When `you' came to be used in the singular, people continued using the form of the verb that agreed with `you' -- the plural `are' -- and not a singular, as you suggest. I do not know how many times this point will need to be restated. You can insist `are' is 2nd person singular all you wish, but in fact Ed Gouldis totally justified in calling `are' a grammatical plural in this case -- especially given the historical parallel he was trying to make. I believe you were unfairly criticising him. For your crimes, you are sentenced to read about tuna fish in net.nlang.. ...FOREVER Clear? -michael
jeffw@tekecs.UUCP (Jeff Winslow) (05/23/85)
> > The fact that Bengali (like English) has lost gender distinctions only > excludes this language from those that might have any bearing on Marie's > hypothesis. > The hypothesis is beside the point. The point is that (apparently) Bengali has no gender distinctions, but Bengali society is (apparently) still as sexist as ever. You want to make English without any gender distinctions. What do you think that will accomplish? A less sexist society? Ha. And your continual reference to anyone who disagrees with you about this as "rabid conservative engineers" and "knee-jerk conservatives" makes me seriously wonder if your grasp of the connection between language and reality isn't slowly rotting away. Stop wasting your time and get on to something really constructive. Jeff Winlsow