🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug5.133214.26926@bnr.ca> Peter Marko <pmarko@bnr.ca> writes:
>In article <1992Aug5.103147.20713@discus.technion.ac.il> David
>Ben_Ami, davidba@carmel.technion.ac.il writes:
>>Hebrew and Arabic (and I guess other Semitic languages too) are very
>>gender-oriented and doesn't have the neuter gender at all (c.f It
>in 
>>English). This is probably because of the Patriachal societies in
>the
>>middle east in Ancient times (and even till today in some places
>like
>>Saudi Arabia).
>
>This is a very interesting observation.  Surely, the history of any
>particular nation would have a great influence on the development of
>its language.

I would agree.  Please see below.

>What do these differences regarding pronouns indicate then?  Could
>it be that our attitudes towards other human beings are hidden in
>our languages?

Maybe.  Maybe not.
--

What about grammatical gender of nouns?  Pick a language--Gaelic, 
English, German, Spanish.  One might all-too-quickly conclude that all
Indo-European languages have this property.  Could it be that back
in Proto-Indo-European times, the patriarchal societies used grammatical
gender to make some subconscious political statement?

It might help to look at a couple languages that don't have grammatical
gender in pronouns or nouns.  How about Modern Western Armenian (an
Indo-European language), and Tagalog (a Malayo-Polynesian language).

In M. W. Armenian there are two third person pronouns.  One refers to 
someone close to the speaker(s) and/or hearer(s) ("ink").  The other refers 
to someone farther away ("an").  I've heard it also said that "ink" and 
"an" can be used to distinguish two third persons in the same discourse, 
where "ink" would refer to the first one mentioned, and "an" to the 
second.  You get the idea.

Spanish has grammatical gender, and this "distance" attribute in its 
demonstrative pronouns (este, ese, aquel), as does W. M. Armenian and 
Tagalog.  A closer analysis of W. M. Armenian demonstratives and personal 
pronouns would show a strong tie in the "distance" attribute in "an" and 
the demonstratives.

Tagalog (the basis of Pilipino, the national language of the Philippines) 
has two first person plural pronouns.  The first ("tayo") refers to 
both the speaker(s) and the hearer(s), while the second refers only to 
the speaker(s) ("kami").  Tagalog also has a three-way distinction
of demonstratives ("ito", "ito 'yan", "ito 'yon") like Spanish.

I know Tagalog isn't the only language that has two third person plural
pronouns, or a similar system.  I believe some native American languages 
exhibit this also (probably, Eskimo-Aleut).  I will ask an authority
on native American languages about this.

Neither Tagalog nor M. W. Armenian have grammatical gender either in 
pronouns or nouns.  Notice I don't just say "Armenian", Eastern or
Classical Armenian may be different, and any reasons for the difference
in Western Armenian would be interesting to discuss. 

Does anyone interested in case-marking typologies have any significant
data or strong thoughts regarding the link of grammatical gender or
the "distance attribute" to different case-marking systems 
(ergative, accusative, active...unaccusative, even)?

Anyway, who out there would like to volunteer to say that Armenian and 
Philippine societies are completely unbiased with regard to gender as 
reflected in their languages?  I don't think so.  This is not a flame, 
just an opener to a different kind of discussion.

>   ...Peter
>
>-------------------------------------------------------
>Peter Marko  .....  (613)763-5344  .....  pmarko@bnr.ca


Regards,


Alex Langley
alex@math.ucla.edu
UCLA Mathnet, 6221 MSA, 405 Hilgard, Los Angeles, CA  90024-1555, (310)825-2897
Opinions are my own, and do not represent those of the University of California.