4.1279 Gender (2/26)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Tue, 23 Apr 91 21:53:20 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 4, No. 1279. Tuesday, 23 Apr 1991.
(1) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 91 13:31:08 EDT (9 lines)
From: dthel@conncoll.bitnet
Subject: gender
(2) Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 08:55:07 LCL (17 lines)
From: "Dana Cartwright, Syracuse, 315-443-4504" <DECARTWR@SUVM>
Subject: Gender In Language
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 91 13:31:08 EDT
From: dthel@conncoll.bitnet
Subject: gender
It may be of interest to those involved in recent Humanist discussions of
gender and language, that Cambridge University Press is shortly bringing
out a book by Grenville Corbett, entitled <Gender>, in the Textbooks in
Linguistics series. Dirk Held, Classics, Connecticut College
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------23----
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 91 08:55:07 LCL
From: "Dana Cartwright, Syracuse Univ, 315-443-4504" <DECARTWR@SUVM>
Subject: Gender In Language
Some weeks ago, Alan Lacy mentioned a study done of native German
speakers, in which "the investigators made up a series of nonsense
words, presented them to native speakers of German, and asked them to
give the gender for each of the words. As I recall, there was something
like 80-90% agreement for their answers."
Has anything similar ever been done for English speakers? I am
particularly interested in the names of the months. Most native
speakers (in the United States) would agree that "April, May, and June"
are feminine.... and August seems to be masculine...but what, for
example, of "December"? Is this a beautiful, mysterious woman? Do
English speakers attach gender to nouns, and do they do it consistently
(well, reasonably so)?