Рябикина Е.В., старший преподаватель

«Ростовский государственный экономический университет (РИНХ)»

Gender, Grammatical

Gender is a feature of special interest because it provides a dramatic demonstration of just how different languages can be. For many of the Indo-European languages it is an important feature that is realized in a high proportion of utterances. This article first examines the definitions of gender to ensure that we are comparing like with like. There has been careful research to do this, and it will become clear that within the languages that do have gender there is a considerable variety of possible gender systems. This is particularly apparent in the ways in which speakers assign nouns to genders. Gender systems may have sex as a component, as in languages with masculine and feminine genders; but, equally, sex may be irrelevant, as in the Algon languages, where the distinction is between animate and inanimate. This article outlines the distribution of gender in the world's languages, and finally considers prospects for investigating tin- feature further.

Terms

The word ‘gender’ derives from Latin genus via Old French gendre, originally meaning ‘kind’ or ‘sort’. There are many kinds of noun: those with four syllables, those denoting agents, and so on. But ‘gender’ is normally reserved for kinds or classes of noun that are, as Hockett (1958: 231) put it, “reflected in the behavior of associated words.” To make valid comparisons, it is important to have this externally motivated classification. The relevant reflection in the behavior of associated words is ‘agreement’ (including for some linguists antecedent-anaphor relations). The noun inventory is divided into different kinds, or genders, according to the different agreements they take. When this is done, we find that in the more familiar languages, the different kinds or genders have a semantic core based on sex (thus, Russian nouns divide into three kinds; nouns denoting males, though not only these, group together, and those denoting females also group in another gender). In other languages the structures may be very similar, but the semantic core may not based not on sex; for instance, it may be based on human versus nonhuman or animate versus inanimate. Thus a language has a gender system only if noun phrases headed by nouns of different types control different agreements.

The Number of Genders

The approach to gender sketched in the first section of this article is based on the notion of ‘agreement , class’ (Zaliznjak, 1964). For two nouns to be in the same agreement class, they must take the same agreements under all conditions - that is, if we hold constant other features such as case and number. (The agreements and their domains can be extremely varied; Corbett, forthcoming.) If two nouns differ in their agreements when factors such as case and number are held constant, then they belong to two different agreement classes and normally they will belong to two different genders. To take another example, in Russian, in environments where nominative singular

forms are syntactically appropriate, nouns like otec ‘father’ and stol ‘table’ take the possessive adjective moj ‘my’ (moj otec ‘my father’). Since this gender includes many nouns denoting males, it is conventionally labeled ‘masculine,’ even though the majority of nouns it includes, like stol, do not denote males. A second agreement class consists of nouns like mat' ‘mother’ and kniga ‘book’, which take moja, and make up the feminine gender. Finally, there are nouns like pis mo ‘letter’, which take moe, and comprise the neuter gender.

For many languages there is no dispute as to the number of genders, but there are others where the question is complex. For instance, Romanian gender has provoked a lengthy debate. The analytical problem of determining the number of genders and the tests for deciding the gender of a given noun depend on separating out the sets into which nouns are divided (the ‘controller genders’) from the number of different genders marked on agreement targets (the ‘target genders’). Frequently the two match up, as in French or German, but in several languages they do not. A full treatment of the subject is not possible here; for a detailed account and extensive references see Corbett (1991).

Gender Assignment

Given that there are the analytic means to establish the genders of a language and to determine which nouns belong in which gender, we now approach the question from the opposite perspective, and ask how nouns are allotted to the genders of a given language. In other words, how does a native speaker ‘know’ what gender a noun belongs to? Models of the mechanisms by which nouns are allotted to genders _ sire called ‘assignment systems.’ Assignment may involve two sorts of information about the noun: its meaning and its form. To illustrate these, we will take some well-established clear examples. There are others that involve more complex combinations of systems.

Predominantly Semantic Assignment Systems

Many languages have semantic assignment rules that are, however, less comprehensive than those of Bagvalal. Predominantly semantic assignment is found in Tsakhur, which like Bagvalal is a Nakh- Daghestanian language. Its four genders are shown in Table 1.

Criterion	Gender	Examples	Glosses
Male rational	I (masculine)	baba dak_j	grandfather father
Female rational	II (feminine)	jed_j	mother daughter
Animate (also some inanimates)	III (animate)	aImale	donkey
		balkan (dama) (lat)	horse (river) (trough)
Other (including a few animates)	IV (neuter)	kalle	head
		sen (kabaj)	year (buterfly)
Table 1

Assignment to genders I and II is straightforward: I is for male humans (also gods, angels, and so on), while II is for female humans (and female mythical beings). Most remaining animates are assigned to gender III, although a few belong to gender IV, along with some mythical beings. Inanimates are found in genders III and IV, and it is hard to discern a pattern (Mel’nikov and Kurbanov, 1964; Ibragimov, 1990: 54-56 and references there; Kibrik, 1999: 48-49).

Languages of this general type are widespread. For some of them, researchers have proposed that abstract semantic criteria partly miss the point, and that if we can gain a better grasp of the worldview of the speakers, we can then understand the assignment system more fully. The most discussed case is that of Dyirbal, North Queensland (Dixon, 1972), which has four genders, primarily for male humans and non-human animates (I), female humans (II), non-flesh food (III), and the residue (IV). There are various nouns for which additional principles are required. For example, the moon is in rhe first (masculine) gender and the sun is in the second (feminine) gender. This recalls Kala Lagaw Ya. In Dyirbal mythology, as indeed in much of Australia, the moon is the husband of the sun. For such instances, the mythological significance of referents can determine gender assignment. Dixon s data and analysis continue to provoke debate, and there is similar debate about the role of worldview in the gender assignment system of Ojibwa (and of other Algonquian languages of North America).

Formal Assignment Systems

Formal assignment rules may appeal to two types of information: phonological and morphological.

Phonological The clearest example of assignment depending on phonological information yet found is provided by Qafar (Afar), an East Cushitic language spoken in northeastern Ethiopia and in Djibouti (data from Parker and Hayward, 1985). Qafar has rather standard semantic assignment rules, namely, that for sex-differentiable nouns, those denoting males are masculine and those denoting females are feminine.

It is the nouns that fall outside these rules - the residue - that are of interest. For them the phonological rules apply: nouns whose citation form ends in an accented vowel are feminine (for example, catd ‘help’), while all others are masculine (for example, gilal ‘winter’, which does not end in a vowel, and tarn и ‘taste’, which ends in an unaccented vowel). These rules operate with few exceptions. There is an interesting twist here: nouns denoting males and females typically fit with the phonological assignment rules, too (for example, baqla ‘husband’ and barn) ‘woman, wife’). Given the data presented so far, we might try to dispense with semantic rules for Qafar and treat it as being of a quite different type. However, there are crucial examples like abba ‘father’, which is masculine, even though it ends in an accented vowel. Similarly, gabbixeera ‘slender-waisted female’ j is feminine, even though the accent is not final. Qatar Tuts straightforward phonological assignment rules.

Morphological. The morphological assignment system that has received the most attention is probably, that of Russian. Earlier it was noted that in Russian, as in many other Indo-European languages, for sex differentiables, nouns denoting males are masculine and those denoting females are feminine.

Masculine	Feminine	Neuter
Dub ‘oak’	Sosna ‘pine’	Derevo ‘tree’
Stvol ‘(tree) trunk’	Doska ‘plank’	Brevno ‘log’
	Voda ‘water’	Moloko ‘milk’
Ogon’ ‘fire’		Plamja ‘flame’
Okean ‘ocean’	Reka ‘river’	More ‘sea’
Avtomobil’ ‘car’		Taksi ‘taxi’
Den’ ‘day’		Utro ‘morning’
	Minuta ‘minute’	Vremja ‘time’
Nerv ‘nerve’	Kost’ ‘bone’	Serdce ‘heart’
Glaz ‘eye’	Brov’ ‘eyebrow’	Yeko ‘eyelid’
Lokot’ ‘elbow’		Zapjast’e ‘wrist’
Flag ‘flag’	Emblema ‘emblem’	Znamja ‘banner’
Table 2

Of course, a speaker needs to know the inflectional behavior of a noun. On the basis of that information, the assignment rules are straightforward. Nouns in I inflection class I are masculine, those in classes II and 111 are feminine, and those in IV are neuter. As with Qafar, we might wonder whether the semantic assignment rules are superfluous, since otec ‘father’ is in class I, while sestra ‘sister’ is in class II, and mat' ‘mother’ is in class III, and therefore many sex- differentiable nouns would be assigned correctly by the morphological assignment rules. But there are also instances where this is not so. Thus, deduska ‘grandfather’ denotes a male but is in class 11, whose nouns are typically feminine; it is masculine. Nouns like this show, once again, that we do not find languages where formal assignment rules are sufficient. Further rules are required in Russian for indeclinable nouns (like taksi ‘taxi’, which is indeclinable and neuter). Morphological assignment systems are found jn various-other Indo-European languages.

Conclusion

We have seen why gender continues to evoke such interest: it is a core feature in some languages, while in many others it is absent. We have the analytic tools for investigating gender systems, and new and in- triguingly complex systems are still coming to light. In terms of gender assignment, the rules vary from being fully transparent, as in Bagvalal, to complex, as ) in French and German. It is a research area in which various different types of expertise are leading to gradual progress.

Bibliography

Aikhenvald A. Y. (2003). A grammar of Tatiana, from Norbwest Amazonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Aronoff M. (1992). ‘Noun classes in Arapesh.’ In Booij G & van Marle J (eds.) Yearbook of morphology 1991.