Talk:Gender in English

A couple of thoughts

• OE Inflections
• OE pronouns didn't inflect for gender in the plural, nor did weak nouns; but strong nouns in nominative and adjectives did.
• Is antecedent the usual word for referent of an interogative pronoun?

I don't want to come across as fussy, I'm actually more interested in understanding the big picture. Interogative and relative pronouns are different uses of the same word in several languages, modern English being one of them. Although who / whom is inflection, I'm uncertain whether who / which is generally understood as inflection, or more likely it is a form of conventional lexical selection.

If that's not clear, a clearer example is I / me / mine / my being inflections of the same lexeme, where choice of I or you is semantically determined. I know this distinction is significant in producing dictionaries of highly inflected languages. In Greek, nouns and verbs from the same root get separate entries, however, in Hebrew and Arabic, because of a peculiarity of Semitic languages, some dictionaries provide roots as the main entries, with verb and/or noun forms specified as particular uses of roots.

These things are relevant to this article, because the gender distinctions in modern English are not cases of inflection, i.e. morphological adaptation of a lexeme. Rather, gender distinctions are made by lexical choice. In Old English, third person pronouns could be conceived of as being inflected for gender; however, they was later imported from Scandinavia and she was taken from the demonstrative pronouns. According to some of the articles I read, these are presumed to have developed to address considerable ambiguities in the OE pronoun system, even more pronounced when dialectic variations are considered. Ironically, it is much more closely related etymologically to he than she is. Oblique case forms of it (hit in OE) were identical to those for he during a large part of the Middle English period.

To further clarify what I'm getting at, the Classical Greek third person pronoun inflected for both gender and number but only has one dictionary entry, because the inflections are regular on a single root:

• Nominative Singular M: aut-os, F: aut-e, N: aut-o; Plural M: aut-oi, F: aut-ai, N: aut-a

I'm sure I'm not the only one to see this as very different to modern English: he, she, it, they. It is lexical selection rather than inflection. Does anyone know sources that make this point and derive some helpful conclusions? Alastair Haines 17:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

PS I'm also nervous about isolating agreement from consideration of verbs. Clearly, verbs inflect to agree with subject for number but not for gender. However, in Hebrew, verbs agree with subject for gender also, and even in the second person. Because English requires an explicit subject, very frequently a pronoun, and these convey gender in the third person, arguably modern English use of verbs entails gender marking as well as number marking in the third person singular. This would explain the complaints some make regarding English being a "gendered" language. Again, I'd love to interact with anyone regarding this, especially if there are sources that discuss related issues. Alastair Haines 18:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any reason to say that English verbs show gender agreement.

The distinction between inflection and lexical choice is not clear-cut. In this article, perhaps we can get away with saying "choice of pronoun", and people can interpret this as choosing the appropriate lexical item, or choosing the appropriate inflectional realization of an abstract pronominal lexeme.

I will remove the statement about "no gender distinction in the plural".

We can change "antecedent" to "referent", it is more general and slightly less technical. And do you know if "hwā/hwæt" reflects grammatical gender agreement (seems unlikely to me) or a human/non-human distinction (as in ME)? CapnPrep 18:45, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! You understood my foibles perfectly, and I agree whole-heartedly that English verbs and gender agreement is not an idea worth raising in this article.

Interogative and relative pronouns in Old English are very interesting. Yes human/non-human is the distinction.

Interogatives inflect to include an additional instrumental case, meaning why? -- hwȳ and hwon.

Relatives are formed in different ways. There is an indeclinable particle that sometimes does the job -- þe. Altneratively, demonstratives are used, with or without the particle. They are used differently depending on whether the particle is present.

Interogatives may also be used as indefinite pronouns, and can take a prefix ġe that marks distributive use.

I will try to throw up more substantial draft text tomorrow. I'm looking forward to learning a lot as we progress. Knowing you are around is very motivational. Thank you! :D Alastair Haines 12:16, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Odd, other languages also have different interrogative pronouns for humans and non-humans (examples from Portuguese: Quem? — "Who?", O quê? — "What?"), yet they don't call that a gender. Or anything special, for that matter. After all, it just happens to a handful of words... FilipeS

Sumerian inflects all nouns for human / non-human, and is not alone in having a system like this. It looks like a gender system, which is why it has traditionally been called that. Pronouns and adjectives agree with the nouns. The grammatical system matches a "natural" system, so there is a lot of redundant grammatical marking. Alastair Haines 12:17, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Unusual?

Under Modern English it has this note: parentheses "()" — unusual usage. But in the table, "they" is in parentheses—even though it's very common. I suggest changing "unusual" to "unusual/nonstandard", but I wanted to see what other people had to say about it. 68.127.11.20 (talk) 00:45, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Metaphors

A section about irregular (though sometimes widespread) usage like "This man really loves his boat/car, he cleans HER every day" would be a nice idea. 89.231.114.97 (talk) 22:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

You clearly have misunderstood the meaning of a metaphor.-- Île flottɑnte~Floɑting islɑnd ^Talk 00:06, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

French-derived words

There are a number of pedants (on TV Tropes, for instance) who insist that French-derived words should maintain their gendered forms in English. For stuff like masseuse vs masseur or fiancé vs fiancée, this is not really grammatical gender and is equivalent to actor vs actress, but I've also heard that men are blond whereas woman are blonde, which is a matter of grammatical gender. Wikipidia's article on blond supports this, though it does endorse using "brunette" for men with brown hair in that article. Should we address this as well? Ace of Sevens (talk) 00:53, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

fiancé(e) may be another example --Rumping (talk) 23:45, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

A/An

Is A/An gender? A box. An ice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cool Å2 (talk • contribs) 00:23, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

No, that has nothing to do with gender at all. It's purely dependent on whether the following word starts with a consonant or a vowel. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:30, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

It's a relic of sandhi. —Tamfang (talk) 10:57, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

No gender in modern English: bollocks!

The existence of "gender specific words" clearly shows that gender is alive and well in English. Referring to a woman as a "waiter" is extremely awkward. Moreover, it is ungrammatical to refer to a waitress in one sentence, and then in the next clause use that as an antecedent for the pronoun "he".

Upon entering the restaurant, I was greeted by a waitress. {He*/She} greeted me cheerfully and showed me to my table.*

This whole article is NPOV. Gender in proper nouns like Jennifer, and words like waitress, and pronouns like she, isn't going anywhere. 192.139.122.42 (talk) 23:03, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

It's not full-fledged gender just to have words referring to male and female beings. Full-fledged gender is, among other things, referring to things that are neither male nor female using pronouns usually used for things that are male or female. Latin is an example, where the moon is "she" and the sun is "he", and if you switched it around, it would be ambiguous what you were referring to. English isn't like that. — Eru·tuon 02:53, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

the article says ' With the exceptions of the traditional, optional uses of *** and *** pronouns for ships (and analogous machinery) and for nation states (e.g. "Britain and *** allies"), all other gender-related grammatical differences have vanished.', what about mother tounge? its kinda simulair, and is it worth noting?Z11o22 (talk) 12:52, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

That's semantic gender (used as a metaphor) rather than grammatical gender. There is some sense in which your native language can be described as the "language of your mother". This is not the case for the other examples. --EminentCluster (talk) 03:35, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

I think nonetheless that the sentence ("most other gender-related grammatical differences have vanished") ought to be rephrased, since the distinctions between he/she/it etc. (in general, not just for ships etc.) are grammatical differences, and they are gender-related. Not sure of the best way to say it. Victor Yus (talk) 06:34, 28 April 2013 (UTC)

Cats, dogs and ships

In English, cats are given a feminine grammatical gender, dogs are masculine and ships are feminine, regardless of their actual physical gender. I wonder if this is documented somewhere? Kortoso (talk) 18:24, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Both cat and dog (hund) are masculine in Anglo-Saxon. Kortoso (talk) 18:42, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

Where do you live that all dogs are considered male and all cats are considered female? In my part of the U.S., most people refer to cats as "he" until they learn the correct gender, then they switch if necessary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 61.120.205.101 (talk) 00:46, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Ships

The gender of the person they are named after has nothing to do with it. http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/feb/01/ask-grown-up-boats-called-she

"Many Indo-European languages have "male", "female" and sometimes "neuter" words. English instead has evolved into using neuter words such as "the". So it could be that making ships female and calling them "she" is an example of a really ancient, English-speaking practice of giving a gender to an inanimate object."

Kortoso (talk) 22:01, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Referring to ships as female is in decline? Sorry but citation, please. An oversight is that I've certainly heard aircraft broadly referred to in the nautical form of she, and vehicles in both she and neuter. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.51.31.80 (talk) 15:09, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

Singular They

There is no singular "they" in the English language, as the article suggests. This is an article about grammar, not about politics; it should therefore adhere to objective and correct English grammar not to a certain ideology, which would be POV. 154.123.101.242 (talk) 20:05, 24 November 2018 (UTC) Mortran

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Marked (actress) / unmarked (actor) would be useful here

"Increasingly, the "male" form of such nouns is used for both men and women."

Or... English author, poet, actor... are unmarked, like teacher, friend, cousin, i.e. they're genderless, thus free at least in formal terms for both m. and f. (whereas in a language with grammatical gender like Catalan, 'my friend/cousin Marta' forces amiga/cosina, outlaws amic/cosí). Granted, not as simple as just these examples might seem to imply (e.g. the marked forms are fading at different velocities: authoress and poetess by now archaic, actress losing ground only recently, waitress fairly robust), but still, introduction of the concept of marking very early on in this article would inform readers of a basic principle, and enable smoother and more straightforward exposition further on. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:21, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Last use of gender for inanimate objects in literature?

When was the last time a non-neutral pronoun for an inanimate object other than a ship (or machine or country) was used in literature? At least as late as 1557 it was used in the introductory poem of https://archive.org/details/TheWhetstoneOfWitte, referring to a stone. ◄ Sebastian 14:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Misleading statement

"Most transgender people use the standard pronouns (he, she, etc.) that match their gender identity". This statement makes no sense, because (1) everyone (transgender or otherwise) uses all the pronouns. For example, I use the pronoun "I" when talking about myself, "he" when talking about Donald Trump, "she" when talking about Hillary Clinton, and so on. And transgender people do the same thing. (2) It is rare to talk about oneself in the third person. So, this statement "most transgender people use" such-and-such pronouns is actually an incorrect way of stating "most transgender people request/expect others to use the standard pronouns (he, she, etc) that match their gender identity". I'll edit the article accordingly. Please, don't misuse the word "use". 86.170.115.181 (talk) 20:54, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi 86.170.115.181, thank you for your message. I do think that 'use' is pretty fine, as people have to use their name and gender pronoun more often than you might think. Filling out forms for example. By your formulation, you would exclude this kind of action, while transgender people do use their new gender pronoun for filling out forms etc. Furthermore, the actions 'requesting' or 'expecting' are weaker than the action 'use', as it is not indicated by the reference that generally transgender people assertively request or expect others to use their preferred pronoun. This is my humble opinion, so if you get consensus for your point, I won't be bothered by any change. Cheers, Pyrite Pro (talk) 18:50, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

Contact with old Norse

The article suggests that contact with old Norse sped along the decline of gender in English. But old Norse had gender (of a very similar kind to old English), so why would contact with it cause English to lose its gender distinctions? Furius (talk) 17:52, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

inflectional reduction?

Maybe define what this means? It is not clear in the context. I assumed it meant that English was in the process of reducing the number of infections, but that is not clear from the gist of the previous paragraph, and furthermore it seems to be contradicted by the following sentences relating to subsequent influence by languages with genders. Laikalegrand (talk) 22:36, 2 February 2023 (UTC)