My univeristy class briefly touched on the subject of linguistic relativity.
The lecture concluded that we should take these studies with a grain of salt and that there are many opinions about this theory.

From what I have found with work by Boroditsky, it seems like there is fair evidence to prove linguistic relativity as existing.

I wanted to look here on Sci.Lang to know the opinions of you all/
see if anyone had any particular insight.

Thanks for your time and thoughts.

Jack Heitman

On Sunday, June 20, 2021 at 4:20:16 PM UTC-7, Jack Heitman wrote:
> My univeristy class briefly touched on the subject of linguistic relativity.
> The lecture concluded that we should take these studies with a grain of salt and that there are many opinions about this theory.
>
> From what I have found with work by Boroditsky, it seems like there is fair evidence to prove linguistic relativity as existing.
>
> I wanted to look here on Sci.Lang to know the opinions of you all/
> see if anyone had any particular insight.
>
Linguistic Relativity has failed to get much attention because there is so
little evidence supporting it. Actually there is less than one might imagine
from a dead stop. I cannot comment on Whorf's examples (because I know
too little about the languages involved). Are there any other plausible
examples?

There must be a tiny influence but the evidence seems to indicate that it is
below the noise level. Take the English word "black". In the US at least it
has several meanings one of which is currently quite fraught. Every US
speaker of English will have a different response to "black" than in some
country (which I feel sure exists) where there is no connection between
color name and race name. But that difference is so small that
systematically ignoring it has no impact on the universe.

I believe that LR is heresy in Chomskian circles.

On Sunday, June 20, 2021 at 10:08:47 PM UTC-4, DKleinecke wrote:
> On Sunday, June 20, 2021 at 4:20:16 PM UTC-7, Jack Heitman wrote:
> > My univeristy class briefly touched on the subject of linguistic relativity.
> > The lecture concluded that we should take these studies with a grain of salt and that there are many opinions about this theory.
> >
> > From what I have found with work by Boroditsky, it seems like there is fair evidence to prove linguistic relativity as existing.
> >
> > I wanted to look here on Sci.Lang to know the opinions of you all/
> > see if anyone had any particular insight.
> >
> Linguistic Relativity has failed to get much attention because there is so
> little evidence supporting it. Actually there is less than one might imagine
> from a dead stop. I cannot comment on Whorf's examples (because I know
> too little about the languages involved). Are there any other plausible
> examples?
>
> There must be a tiny influence but the evidence seems to indicate that it is
> below the noise level. Take the English word "black". In the US at least it
> has several meanings one of which is currently quite fraught. Every US
> speaker of English will have a different response to "black" than in some
> country (which I feel sure exists) where there is no connection between
> color name and race name. But that difference is so small that
> systematically ignoring it has no impact on the universe.
>
> I believe that LR is heresy in Chomskian circles.

Kay & Berlin's *Basic Color Terms* (1969) started as an attempt to
test the Linguistic Relativity principle. It had interesting results that
didn't bear on the LRP!

On 2021-06-20, Jack Heitman <jackio245@gmail.com> wrote:

> From what I have found with work by Boroditsky, it seems like there is fair evidence to prove linguistic relativity as existing.
>
> I wanted to look here on Sci.Lang to know the opinions of you all/
> see if anyone had any particular insight.

Although usually not referenced as such, linguistic relativity is
at the core of a huge public debate that has enflamed swaths of
Europe.

The issue is gender-neutral language.

For English, this is essentially a non-issue. Gender-specific
morphemes such as "-man" and "-ess" have been phased out, and the
language has _natural gender_ as opposed to grammatical gender. In
English, a word such as "doctor" has no inherent gender. The choice
of "she", "he", or hypothetical "it" depends on whether a particular
doctor is a woman, man, or even a machine.

In many European languages, every noun has a grammatical gender,
which is constantly reinforced by agreement from determiners,
adjectives, pronouns, etc. While those genders are said to be
arbitrarly distributed across the lexicon (a vast simplification),
they are also associated with male and female sex, which is why we
talk about "masculine" and "feminine" gender.

In many European languages, the "doctor" word is inherently masculine.
Typically languages allow to feminize such terms by a suffix or
such; for illustrative purposes I'll pick the form "doctora".
In "the doctor will see you", "doctor" carries male connotations.
If the doctor is a woman, that is jarring, and you'll probably see
"the doctora will see you". But what about a generic person:
"A doctor will see you"? The conservative view is that the masculine
gender of the "doctor" word is purely grammatical and does not imply
anything about the doctor's sex. However, research shows that there
is a framing effect and the masculine noun predisposes listeners
to expect a male person. (Lingustic relativity!) This has now
escaped from the halls of academia into society at large, and there
are plenty of people who object to the predominant use of masculine
nouns in generic contexts. Many woman specifically say they feel
excluded.

So what do you do? Remember, gender is an intrinsic property of
each noun, there is no non-gendered noun. The English approach is
not applicable. The traditional solution is to mention both
alternatives: "a doctor or doctora will see you". However, that
will turn cumbersome in a hurry. In line with the cultural dominance
of written text, people have come up with a variety of abbreviated
orthographic schemes along the lines of "a doctor/a will see you".
Acceptance of these forms has become increasingly polarized and
huge public debates ~ culture wars are now raging across France,
Germany, and presumably other countries. (António, has this blown
up in Portugal yet?)

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On Monday, June 21, 2021 at 12:30:08 PM UTC-4, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> On 2021-06-20, Jack Heitman <jack...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > From what I have found with work by Boroditsky, it seems like there is fair evidence to prove linguistic relativity as existing.
> >
> > I wanted to look here on Sci.Lang to know the opinions of you all/
> > see if anyone had any particular insight.
> Although usually not referenced as such, linguistic relativity is
> at the core of a huge public debate that has enflamed swaths of
> Europe.
>
> The issue is gender-neutral language.
>
> For English, this is essentially a non-issue. Gender-specific
> morphemes such as "-man" and "-ess" have been phased out, and the
> language has _natural gender_ as opposed to grammatical gender. In
> English, a word such as "doctor" has no inherent gender. The choice
> of "she", "he", or hypothetical "it" depends on whether a particular
> doctor is a woman, man, or even a machine.
>
> In many European languages, every noun has a grammatical gender,
> which is constantly reinforced by agreement from determiners,
> adjectives, pronouns, etc. While those genders are said to be
> arbitrarly distributed across the lexicon (a vast simplification),
> they are also associated with male and female sex, which is why we
> talk about "masculine" and "feminine" gender.
>
> In many European languages, the "doctor" word is inherently masculine.
> Typically languages allow to feminize such terms by a suffix or
> such; for illustrative purposes I'll pick the form "doctora".
> In "the doctor will see you", "doctor" carries male connotations.
> If the doctor is a woman, that is jarring, and you'll probably see
> "the doctora will see you". But what about a generic person:
> "A doctor will see you"? The conservative view is that the masculine
> gender of the "doctor" word is purely grammatical and does not imply
> anything about the doctor's sex. However, research shows that there
> is a framing effect and the masculine noun predisposes listeners
> to expect a male person. (Lingustic relativity!) This has now
> escaped from the halls of academia into society at large, and there
> are plenty of people who object to the predominant use of masculine
> nouns in generic contexts. Many woman specifically say they feel
> excluded.

There used to be a very popular conundrum: "There was a serious
accident. A man was driving his young son to school when something
happened, and the boy was badly injured. He was brought to the closest
hospital, prepped for the O.R., but the surgeon took one look at the patient
and said, "I can't operate, that's my son!" How was that possible?"

It would be a long time, if ever, before the hearer would come up with
"The surgeon is the boy's mother."

> So what do you do? Remember, gender is an intrinsic property of
> each noun, there is no non-gendered noun. The English approach is
> not applicable. The traditional solution is to mention both
> alternatives: "a doctor or doctora will see you". However, that
> will turn cumbersome in a hurry. In line with the cultural dominance
> of written text, people have come up with a variety of abbreviated
> orthographic schemes along the lines of "a doctor/a will see you".
> Acceptance of these forms has become increasingly polarized and
> huge public debates ~ culture wars are now raging across France,
> Germany, and presumably other countries. (António, has this blown
> up in Portugal yet?)

Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
> On 2021-06-20, Jack Heitman <jackio245@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From what I have found with work by Boroditsky, it seems like there is
>> fair evidence to prove linguistic relativity as existing.
>>
>> I wanted to look here on Sci.Lang to know the opinions of you all/
>> see if anyone had any particular insight.
>
> Although usually not referenced as such, linguistic relativity is
> at the core of a huge public debate that has enflamed swaths of
> Europe.
>
> The issue is gender-neutral language.
>
> For English, this is essentially a non-issue. Gender-specific
> morphemes such as "-man" and "-ess" have been phased out, and the
> language has _natural gender_ as opposed to grammatical gender. In
> English, a word such as "doctor" has no inherent gender. The choice
> of "she", "he", or hypothetical "it" depends on whether a particular
> doctor is a woman, man, or even a machine.
>
> In many European languages, every noun has a grammatical gender,
> which is constantly reinforced by agreement from determiners,
> adjectives, pronouns, etc. While those genders are said to be
> arbitrarly distributed across the lexicon (a vast simplification),
> they are also associated with male and female sex, which is why we
> talk about "masculine" and "feminine" gender.
>
> In many European languages, the "doctor" word is inherently masculine.
> Typically languages allow to feminize such terms by a suffix or
> such; for illustrative purposes I'll pick the form "doctora".
> In "the doctor will see you", "doctor" carries male connotations.
> If the doctor is a woman, that is jarring, and you'll probably see
> "the doctora will see you". But what about a generic person:
> "A doctor will see you"? The conservative view is that the masculine
> gender of the "doctor" word is purely grammatical and does not imply
> anything about the doctor's sex. However, research shows that there
> is a framing effect and the masculine noun predisposes listeners
> to expect a male person. (Lingustic relativity!) This has now
> escaped from the halls of academia into society at large, and there
> are plenty of people who object to the predominant use of masculine
> nouns in generic contexts. Many woman specifically say they feel
> excluded.
>
> So what do you do? Remember, gender is an intrinsic property of
> each noun, there is no non-gendered noun. The English approach is
> not applicable. The traditional solution is to mention both
> alternatives: "a doctor or doctora will see you". However, that
> will turn cumbersome in a hurry. In line with the cultural dominance
> of written text, people have come up with a variety of abbreviated
> orthographic schemes along the lines of "a doctor/a will see you".
> Acceptance of these forms has become increasingly polarized and
> huge public debates ~ culture wars are now raging across France,
> Germany, and presumably other countries. (António, has this blown
> up in Portugal yet?)
>

We're kind of a backwater, but there are folks eager to import all kinds of
culture wars. Historically, where it really is called for, the or/and
option has been used. In written form, -o(s)/-a(s) is also seen, for
decades now.
In left wing blogs you may find -@(s), which I imagine they borrowed from
Spain.
Generally speaking, only people who go out of their way to feel excluded
find that -os is inappropriate for a mixed group. Depending on context, -o
may or may not naturally suggest a man, as opposed to being indeterminate.
To showcase that the attitude is in the person rather than the words,
consider that a former president of Brazil insisted she was the
'Presidenta', when in fact the word 'presidente' is a present participle
with no connotations of gender or sex.

Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Monday, June 21, 2021 at 12:30:08 PM UTC-4, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>> On 2021-06-20, Jack Heitman <jack...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> From what I have found with work by Boroditsky, it seems like there is
>>> fair evidence to prove linguistic relativity as existing.
>>>
>>> I wanted to look here on Sci.Lang to know the opinions of you all/
>>> see if anyone had any particular insight.
>> Although usually not referenced as such, linguistic relativity is
>> at the core of a huge public debate that has enflamed swaths of
>> Europe.
>>
>> The issue is gender-neutral language.
>>
>> For English, this is essentially a non-issue. Gender-specific
>> morphemes such as "-man" and "-ess" have been phased out, and the
>> language has _natural gender_ as opposed to grammatical gender. In
>> English, a word such as "doctor" has no inherent gender. The choice
>> of "she", "he", or hypothetical "it" depends on whether a particular
>> doctor is a woman, man, or even a machine.
>>
>> In many European languages, every noun has a grammatical gender,
>> which is constantly reinforced by agreement from determiners,
>> adjectives, pronouns, etc. While those genders are said to be
>> arbitrarly distributed across the lexicon (a vast simplification),
>> they are also associated with male and female sex, which is why we
>> talk about "masculine" and "feminine" gender.
>>
>> In many European languages, the "doctor" word is inherently masculine.
>> Typically languages allow to feminize such terms by a suffix or
>> such; for illustrative purposes I'll pick the form "doctora".
>> In "the doctor will see you", "doctor" carries male connotations.
>> If the doctor is a woman, that is jarring, and you'll probably see
>> "the doctora will see you". But what about a generic person:
>> "A doctor will see you"? The conservative view is that the masculine
>> gender of the "doctor" word is purely grammatical and does not imply
>> anything about the doctor's sex. However, research shows that there
>> is a framing effect and the masculine noun predisposes listeners
>> to expect a male person. (Lingustic relativity!) This has now
>> escaped from the halls of academia into society at large, and there
>> are plenty of people who object to the predominant use of masculine
>> nouns in generic contexts. Many woman specifically say they feel
>> excluded.
>
> There used to be a very popular conundrum: "There was a serious
> accident. A man was driving his young son to school when something
> happened, and the boy was badly injured. He was brought to the closest
> hospital, prepped for the O.R., but the surgeon took one look at the patient
> and said, "I can't operate, that's my son!" How was that possible?"
>
> It would be a long time, if ever, before the hearer would come up with
> "The surgeon is the boy's mother."
>

...illustrating that the gender expectation had to do with the predominance
or exclusiveness of male surgeons rather than anything with the word
itself.

>> So what do you do? Remember, gender is an intrinsic property of
>> each noun, there is no non-gendered noun. The English approach is
>> not applicable. The traditional solution is to mention both
>> alternatives: "a doctor or doctora will see you". However, that
>> will turn cumbersome in a hurry. In line with the cultural dominance
>> of written text, people have come up with a variety of abbreviated
>> orthographic schemes along the lines of "a doctor/a will see you".
>> Acceptance of these forms has become increasingly polarized and
>> huge public debates ~ culture wars are now raging across France,
>> Germany, and presumably other countries. (António, has this blown
>> up in Portugal yet?)
>

On Monday, June 21, 2021 at 4:07:18 PM UTC-4, António Marques wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Monday, June 21, 2021 at 12:30:08 PM UTC-4, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
> >> On 2021-06-20, Jack Heitman <jack...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> From what I have found with work by Boroditsky, it seems like there is
> >>> fair evidence to prove linguistic relativity as existing.
> >>>
> >>> I wanted to look here on Sci.Lang to know the opinions of you all/
> >>> see if anyone had any particular insight.
> >> Although usually not referenced as such, linguistic relativity is
> >> at the core of a huge public debate that has enflamed swaths of
> >> Europe.
> >>
> >> The issue is gender-neutral language.
> >>
> >> For English, this is essentially a non-issue. Gender-specific
> >> morphemes such as "-man" and "-ess" have been phased out, and the
> >> language has _natural gender_ as opposed to grammatical gender. In
> >> English, a word such as "doctor" has no inherent gender. The choice
> >> of "she", "he", or hypothetical "it" depends on whether a particular
> >> doctor is a woman, man, or even a machine.
> >>
> >> In many European languages, every noun has a grammatical gender,
> >> which is constantly reinforced by agreement from determiners,
> >> adjectives, pronouns, etc. While those genders are said to be
> >> arbitrarly distributed across the lexicon (a vast simplification),
> >> they are also associated with male and female sex, which is why we
> >> talk about "masculine" and "feminine" gender.
> >>
> >> In many European languages, the "doctor" word is inherently masculine.
> >> Typically languages allow to feminize such terms by a suffix or
> >> such; for illustrative purposes I'll pick the form "doctora".
> >> In "the doctor will see you", "doctor" carries male connotations.
> >> If the doctor is a woman, that is jarring, and you'll probably see
> >> "the doctora will see you". But what about a generic person:
> >> "A doctor will see you"? The conservative view is that the masculine
> >> gender of the "doctor" word is purely grammatical and does not imply
> >> anything about the doctor's sex. However, research shows that there
> >> is a framing effect and the masculine noun predisposes listeners
> >> to expect a male person. (Lingustic relativity!) This has now
> >> escaped from the halls of academia into society at large, and there
> >> are plenty of people who object to the predominant use of masculine
> >> nouns in generic contexts. Many woman specifically say they feel
> >> excluded.
> >
> > There used to be a very popular conundrum: "There was a serious
> > accident. A man was driving his young son to school when something
> > happened, and the boy was badly injured. He was brought to the closest
> > hospital, prepped for the O.R., but the surgeon took one look at the patient
> > and said, "I can't operate, that's my son!" How was that possible?"
> >
> > It would be a long time, if ever, before the hearer would come up with
> > "The surgeon is the boy's mother."
> >
> ..illustrating that the gender expectation had to do with the predominance
> or exclusiveness of male surgeons rather than anything with the word
> itself.

And that Europeans shouldn't beat themselves up over having such
problems _because_ they have grammatical gender.

I wonder whether similar "conundrums" can be constructed in Swahili,
where the "gender" prefixes -- 19 are reconstructed for Proto-Bantu --
often but not always mark semantic classes (but male/female happens
not to be such a pair).

> >> So what do you do? Remember, gender is an intrinsic property of
> >> each noun, there is no non-gendered noun. The English approach is
> >> not applicable. The traditional solution is to mention both
> >> alternatives: "a doctor or doctora will see you". However, that
> >> will turn cumbersome in a hurry. In line with the cultural dominance
> >> of written text, people have come up with a variety of abbreviated
> >> orthographic schemes along the lines of "a doctor/a will see you".
> >> Acceptance of these forms has become increasingly polarized and
> >> huge public debates ~ culture wars are now raging across France,
> >> Germany, and presumably other countries. (António, has this blown
> >> up in Portugal yet?)

Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de> wrote:
> On 2021-06-20, Jack Heitman <jackio245@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> From what I have found with work by Boroditsky, it seems like there is
>> fair evidence to prove linguistic relativity as existing.
>>
>> I wanted to look here on Sci.Lang to know the opinions of you all/
>> see if anyone had any particular insight.
>
> Although usually not referenced as such, linguistic relativity is
> at the core of a huge public debate that has enflamed swaths of
> Europe.
>
> The issue is gender-neutral language.
>
> For English, this is essentially a non-issue. Gender-specific
> morphemes such as "-man" and "-ess" have been phased out, and the
> language has _natural gender_ as opposed to grammatical gender. In
> English, a word such as "doctor" has no inherent gender. The choice
> of "she", "he", or hypothetical "it" depends on whether a particular
> doctor is a woman, man, or even a machine.
>
> In many European languages, every noun has a grammatical gender,
> which is constantly reinforced by agreement from determiners,
> adjectives, pronouns, etc. While those genders are said to be
> arbitrarly distributed across the lexicon (a vast simplification),
> they are also associated with male and female sex, which is why we
> talk about "masculine" and "feminine" gender.
>
> In many European languages, the "doctor" word is inherently masculine.
> Typically languages allow to feminize such terms by a suffix or
> such; for illustrative purposes I'll pick the form "doctora".
> In "the doctor will see you", "doctor" carries male connotations.
> If the doctor is a woman, that is jarring, and you'll probably see
> "the doctora will see you". But what about a generic person:
> "A doctor will see you"? The conservative view is that the masculine
> gender of the "doctor" word is purely grammatical and does not imply
> anything about the doctor's sex. However, research shows that there
> is a framing effect and the masculine noun predisposes listeners
> to expect a male person.

Are those the same type of listeners who were set back by the existence of
gender-specific words, so that now we can have no more actresses and
poetesses?

One would think that most german words could be made gender neutral without
effort - der Arzt, die Arzt... as they have no gender-specific endings (or
other feature).

What do those people do with _das Mädchen_? How isn't that enough to show
them their point is artificial?

Portuguese women's certainly have no issue being addressed with any of the
variants of _amor_ 'love', which is masculine. Now and then you hear
_morzinha_, but that's in jest.

And how come don't the non-binary people like the actually non binary
grammatical gender where it or remnants of it exist?

The problem is that any solution you come up with soon gets obsolete. In
Portugal we don't even have a word for black people anymore: whites call
blacks black among themselves, blacks call blacks black among themselves,
but whites can't call blacks black to their face - and I don't mean they
can't because of language police, but rather because it's not felt as
neutral. The problem is there is no neutral word, and there hasn't been for
more than a century. We may be on the way to rehabilitate our word for
'black', but we're not there yet. And as it turns out, it's not a
linguistic thing either: the reason the word cannot be assumed to be
neutral is that 'blackness' itself is not always neutral, carrying with it
a notion of 'otherness' that just isn't there in english.

> (Lingustic relativity!) This has now
> escaped from the halls of academia into society at large, and there
> are plenty of people who object to the predominant use of masculine
> nouns in generic contexts. Many woman specifically say they feel
> excluded.
>
> So what do you do? Remember, gender is an intrinsic property of
> each noun, there is no non-gendered noun. The English approach is
> not applicable. The traditional solution is to mention both
> alternatives: "a doctor or doctora will see you". However, that
> will turn cumbersome in a hurry. In line with the cultural dominance
> of written text, people have come up with a variety of abbreviated
> orthographic schemes along the lines of "a doctor/a will see you".
> Acceptance of these forms has become increasingly polarized and
> huge public debates ~ culture wars are now raging across France,
> Germany, and presumably other countries. (António, has this blown
> up in Portugal yet?)
>

Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Monday, June 21, 2021 at 4:07:18 PM UTC-4, António Marques wrote:
>> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>> On Monday, June 21, 2021 at 12:30:08 PM UTC-4, Christian Weisgerber wrote:
>>>> On 2021-06-20, Jack Heitman <jack...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> From what I have found with work by Boroditsky, it seems like there is
>>>>> fair evidence to prove linguistic relativity as existing.
>>>>>
>>>>> I wanted to look here on Sci.Lang to know the opinions of you all/
>>>>> see if anyone had any particular insight.
>>>> Although usually not referenced as such, linguistic relativity is
>>>> at the core of a huge public debate that has enflamed swaths of
>>>> Europe.
>>>>
>>>> The issue is gender-neutral language.
>>>>
>>>> For English, this is essentially a non-issue. Gender-specific
>>>> morphemes such as "-man" and "-ess" have been phased out, and the
>>>> language has _natural gender_ as opposed to grammatical gender. In
>>>> English, a word such as "doctor" has no inherent gender. The choice
>>>> of "she", "he", or hypothetical "it" depends on whether a particular
>>>> doctor is a woman, man, or even a machine.
>>>>
>>>> In many European languages, every noun has a grammatical gender,
>>>> which is constantly reinforced by agreement from determiners,
>>>> adjectives, pronouns, etc. While those genders are said to be
>>>> arbitrarly distributed across the lexicon (a vast simplification),
>>>> they are also associated with male and female sex, which is why we
>>>> talk about "masculine" and "feminine" gender.
>>>>
>>>> In many European languages, the "doctor" word is inherently masculine.
>>>> Typically languages allow to feminize such terms by a suffix or
>>>> such; for illustrative purposes I'll pick the form "doctora".
>>>> In "the doctor will see you", "doctor" carries male connotations.
>>>> If the doctor is a woman, that is jarring, and you'll probably see
>>>> "the doctora will see you". But what about a generic person:
>>>> "A doctor will see you"? The conservative view is that the masculine
>>>> gender of the "doctor" word is purely grammatical and does not imply
>>>> anything about the doctor's sex. However, research shows that there
>>>> is a framing effect and the masculine noun predisposes listeners
>>>> to expect a male person. (Lingustic relativity!) This has now
>>>> escaped from the halls of academia into society at large, and there
>>>> are plenty of people who object to the predominant use of masculine
>>>> nouns in generic contexts. Many woman specifically say they feel
>>>> excluded.
>>>
>>> There used to be a very popular conundrum: "There was a serious
>>> accident. A man was driving his young son to school when something
>>> happened, and the boy was badly injured. He was brought to the closest
>>> hospital, prepped for the O.R., but the surgeon took one look at the patient
>>> and said, "I can't operate, that's my son!" How was that possible?"
>>>
>>> It would be a long time, if ever, before the hearer would come up with
>>> "The surgeon is the boy's mother."
>>>
>> ..illustrating that the gender expectation had to do with the predominance
>> or exclusiveness of male surgeons rather than anything with the word
>> itself.
>
> And that Europeans shouldn't beat themselves up over having such
> problems _because_ they have grammatical gender.
>
> I wonder whether similar "conundrums" can be constructed in Swahili,
> where the "gender" prefixes -- 19 are reconstructed for Proto-Bantu --
> often but not always mark semantic classes (but male/female happens
> not to be such a pair).
>

At least in portuguese, the only connection I can see between grammatical
gender and sex is that when referring to a person of a specific sex you use
sex-specific variants of words that have a variant for each gender - e.g.
sobrinho nephew, sobrinha niece - and those in turn require the specific
gender pronouns and articles. But then there are all sorts of words that
have a variant for each gender: most nouns that end in -o have a
counterpart that ends in -a, and there is nothing in most of them that has
anything to do with sex.
Porto port, porta door,
pinheiro cluster pine, pinheira stone pine,
lagarto lizard, lagarta caterpillar,
horto botanical garden, horta vegetable garden,
meio environment, meia sock,
poço well, poça puddle, pôça small pond (a feminine created from the
masculine with the closed o, whereas the etymological feminine has an open
o),
velo fur, vela sail...

And then many animal names just don't allow doing this. Veado, búfalo,
raposa, have the grammatical gender they have regardless of the animal's
sex.
Where an -a/-o alternative exists, it's usually reserved for a different
species. Cats, mice and bats are about the only common animals that can use
the pattern, whereas dogs or sheep or goats or cows use completely
different words for each sex.

The bottom line is that I don't think anyone thinks of tables, tv sets or
walls as female, nor of glasses or paintings or turntables as male. In that
regard, calling the genders masculine and feminine may be the real issue.

Mon, 21 Jun 2021 21:13:39 -0000 (UTC): António Marques
<antonioprm@sapo.pt> scribeva:
>whereas dogs or sheep or goats or cows use completely
>different words

They do? In fairy tales, yes.
--
Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com

Ruud Harmsen <rh@rudhar.com> wrote:
> Mon, 21 Jun 2021 21:13:39 -0000 (UTC): António Marques
> <antonioprm@sapo.pt> scribeva:
>> whereas dogs or sheep or goats or cows use completely
>> different words
>
> They do? In fairy tales, yes.

There's a book in which a woman calls another woman 'cow'. The other woman
replies 'Moo!'.

On Monday, June 21, 2021 at 4:52:09 PM UTC-4, António Marques wrote:

> Are those the same type of listeners who were set back by the existence of
> gender-specific words, so that now we can have no more actresses and
> poetesses?

"Poetess" is insulting/degrading. What possible difference could a person's
sex make in her literary ability?

> The problem is that any solution you come up with soon gets obsolete. In
> Portugal we don't even have a word for black people anymore: whites call
> blacks black among themselves, blacks call blacks black among themselves,
> but whites can't call blacks black to their face - and I don't mean they
> can't because of language police, but rather because it's not felt as
> neutral. The problem is there is no neutral word, and there hasn't been for
> more than a century. We may be on the way to rehabilitate our word for
> 'black', but we're not there yet. And as it turns out, it's not a
> linguistic thing either: the reason the word cannot be assumed to be
> neutral is that 'blackness' itself is not always neutral, carrying with it
> a notion of 'otherness' that just isn't there in english.

For abut half a year, there has been a mayoral campaign in NYC (today
is election day). Race is highly relevant here, and there's a good mix of
ethnicity and sexes (but not of genders -- the only openly gay candidate,
the outgoing City Council President, decided to run for Comptroller
instead.) In the latest polling, the leading candidate is a black man,
the second is an Asian man, and the third is a black woman. We have
"ranked choice voting" for the first time, and there's no telling how the
contest among 13 candidates (8 of them serious) will come out.

On Monday, June 21, 2021 at 5:13:41 PM UTC-4, António Marques wrote:

> At least in portuguese, the only connection I can see between grammatical
> gender and sex is that when referring to a person of a specific sex you use
> sex-specific variants of words that have a variant for each gender - e.g.
> sobrinho nephew, sobrinha niece - and those in turn require the specific
> gender pronouns and articles.

Sure, that's now sex-gender languages do it.

> But then there are all sorts of words that
> have a variant for each gender: most nouns that end in -o have a
> counterpart that ends in -a, and there is nothing in most of them that has
> anything to do with sex.

How many of the pairs listed below are seen as "the same word"?
(Some if them are obvious, like lagart- and hort-.)

The few such cases in French aren't considered "the same word."

> Porto port, porta door,
> pinheiro cluster pine, pinheira stone pine,
> lagarto lizard, lagarta caterpillar,
> horto botanical garden, horta vegetable garden,
> meio environment, meia sock,
> poço well, poça puddle, pôça small pond (a feminine created from the
> masculine with the closed o, whereas the etymological feminine has an open
> o),
> velo fur, vela sail...
>
> And then many animal names just don't allow doing this. Veado, búfalo,
> raposa, have the grammatical gender they have regardless of the animal's
> sex.
> Where an -a/-o alternative exists, it's usually reserved for a different
> species. Cats, mice and bats are about the only common animals that can use
> the pattern, whereas dogs or sheep or goats or cows use completely
> different words for each sex.
>
> The bottom line is that I don't think anyone thinks of tables, tv sets or
> walls as female, nor of glasses or paintings or turntables as male. In that
> regard, calling the genders masculine and feminine may be the real issue.

On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 2:15:16 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> Mon, 21 Jun 2021 21:13:39 -0000 (UTC): António Marques

> <anton...@sapo.pt> scribeva:
> >whereas dogs or sheep or goats or cows use completely
> >different words
>
> They do? In fairy tales, yes.

They do in English for farm animals, where the distinction
is important. Such names are probably not well known
among most speakers, beyond things like bull and cow,
stallion and mare, and a few others.

The range of words for pigs is quite astounding.

Op 22/06/2021 om 8:15 schreef Ruud Harmsen:
> Mon, 21 Jun 2021 21:13:39 -0000 (UTC): António Marques
> <antonioprm@sapo.pt> scribeva:
>> whereas dogs or sheep or goats or cows use completely
>> different words
> They do? In fairy tales, yes.

Of course, in Holland I would not be surprised by statements like

Where our cow has gone? Well, he's been taken to his bull.

--

guido wugi

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 05:48:05 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@verizon.net> scribeva:

>On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 2:15:16 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>> Mon, 21 Jun 2021 21:13:39 -0000 (UTC): António Marques
>
>> <anton...@sapo.pt> scribeva:
>> >whereas dogs or sheep or goats or cows use completely
>> >different words
>>
>> They do? In fairy tales, yes.
>
>They do in English for farm animals, where the distinction
>is important.

They? Dogs and sheep and goats and cows?

>Such names are probably not well known
>among most speakers, beyond things like bull and cow,
>stallion and mare, and a few others.
>
>The range of words for pigs is quite astounding.

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 15:58:19 +0200: wugi <brol@wugi.be> scribeva:

>Op 22/06/2021 om 8:15 schreef Ruud Harmsen:
>> Mon, 21 Jun 2021 21:13:39 -0000 (UTC): António Marques
>> <antonioprm@sapo.pt> scribeva:
>>> whereas dogs or sheep or goats or cows use completely
>>> different words
>> They do? In fairy tales, yes.
>
>
>Of course, in Holland I would not be surprised by statements like
>
>Where our cow has gone? Well, he's been taken to his bull.

Yes. And then the cow uses those words?

On 6/22/2021 1:25 AM, António Marques wrote:
> Ruud Harmsen <rh@rudhar.com> wrote:
>> Mon, 21 Jun 2021 21:13:39 -0000 (UTC): António Marques
>> <antonioprm@sapo.pt> scribeva:
>>> whereas dogs or sheep or goats or cows use completely
>>> different words
>>
>> They do? In fairy tales, yes.
>
> There's a book in which a woman calls another woman 'cow'. The other woman
> replies 'Moo!'.

There's a story, documented, published, and repeated often that is
similar: A very talented and famous bridge player had a reputation for a
foul mouth and very bad (bridge) table manners. One day after getting a
poor result against two little old ladies who were awful at bridge one
of them, rather chubby, said something to the pro that irritated him. He
turned to her and shouted "cow". The American Contract Bridge League
(ACBL) who is the top bridge legislative body in the US is ultimately
responsible for discipline as well as rules of the came, tournaments,
etc., suspended him for six months.

He returns to bridge after the suspension and on his first outing in a
weekday duplicate he finds himself playing a round against the same two
old ladies. He looks at the one he previously insulted and says "moo".
That drew another lengthy suspension.

This incident was reported to happen in the Los Angeles area where I
lived most of my life. I heard the story multiple times and a few people
I knew claimed to be there at one of the two verbal assault - that is,
at the club that day but not sitting at the table where the action took
place. The only way to actually verify the incident would be to review
the minutes of the disciplinary committee of the ACBL and I haven't done
that.
--
Jeff Barnett

Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Monday, June 21, 2021 at 4:52:09 PM UTC-4, António Marques wrote:
>
>> Are those the same type of listeners who were set back by the existence of
>> gender-specific words, so that now we can have no more actresses and
>> poetesses?
>
> "Poetess" is insulting/degrading. What possible difference could a person's
> sex make in her literary ability?

It was devised as such in english, but not necessarily in every other
language.
Why throw out actress along with it?

>
>> The problem is that any solution you come up with soon gets obsolete. In
>> Portugal we don't even have a word for black people anymore: whites call
>> blacks black among themselves, blacks call blacks black among themselves,
>> but whites can't call blacks black to their face - and I don't mean they
>> can't because of language police, but rather because it's not felt as
>> neutral. The problem is there is no neutral word, and there hasn't been for
>> more than a century. We may be on the way to rehabilitate our word for
>> 'black', but we're not there yet. And as it turns out, it's not a
>> linguistic thing either: the reason the word cannot be assumed to be
>> neutral is that 'blackness' itself is not always neutral, carrying with it
>> a notion of 'otherness' that just isn't there in english.
>
> For abut half a year, there has been a mayoral campaign in NYC (today
> is election day). Race is highly relevant here, and there's a good mix of
> ethnicity and sexes (but not of genders -- the only openly gay candidate,
> the outgoing City Council President, decided to run for Comptroller
> instead.) In the latest polling, the leading candidate is a black man,
> the second is an Asian man, and the third is a black woman. We have
> "ranked choice voting" for the first time, and there's no telling how the
> contest among 13 candidates (8 of them serious) will come out.
>

My impression is that in the US blacks are viewed as another kind of
american, often a kind discriminated against. Over here most blacks are not
viewed as portuguese - except of course for the small part who have lived
all their lives among white peers. But as the majority of black folks here
are now natural born, that view is changing. NB that when I say they're not
viewed as portuguese (but rather as naturals of wherever they or their
parents came from), that isn't necessarily with a negative spin - the
english don't view the scots as english, yet that doesn't always carry
negativity with it.

I saw a piece today, on the election you refer to, and had to remind myself
it was not to replace the disgraced governor, but rather the mayor. Do you
have term limits for that?

On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 4:20:48 PM UTC-4, António Marques wrote:
> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > On Monday, June 21, 2021 at 4:52:09 PM UTC-4, António Marques wrote:
> >
> >> Are those the same type of listeners who were set back by the existence of
> >> gender-specific words, so that now we can have no more actresses and
> >> poetesses?
> >
> > "Poetess" is insulting/degrading. What possible difference could a person's
> > sex make in her literary ability?
> It was devised as such in english, but not necessarily in every other
> language.
> Why throw out actress along with it?

"Actress" is used when relevant. "Meryl Streep is a great actor" doesn't
restrict her comparison to only half her profession. "Meryl Streep has
won four Best Actress Oscars" refers to the roles she has taken, most
of which couldn't have been reasonably been played by men in today's
society. (Well, Dan Ayckroyd did a mean Julia Child.) Sophie, Anna
Wintour, Mrs Thatcher, etc.

> >> The problem is that any solution you come up with soon gets obsolete. In
> >> Portugal we don't even have a word for black people anymore: whites call
> >> blacks black among themselves, blacks call blacks black among themselves,
> >> but whites can't call blacks black to their face - and I don't mean they
> >> can't because of language police, but rather because it's not felt as
> >> neutral. The problem is there is no neutral word, and there hasn't been for
> >> more than a century. We may be on the way to rehabilitate our word for
> >> 'black', but we're not there yet. And as it turns out, it's not a
> >> linguistic thing either: the reason the word cannot be assumed to be
> >> neutral is that 'blackness' itself is not always neutral, carrying with it
> >> a notion of 'otherness' that just isn't there in english.
> > For abut half a year, there has been a mayoral campaign in NYC (today
> > is election day). Race is highly relevant here, and there's a good mix of
> > ethnicity and sexes (but not of genders -- the only openly gay candidate,
> > the outgoing City Council President, decided to run for Comptroller
> > instead.) In the latest polling, the leading candidate is a black man,
> > the second is an Asian man, and the third is a black woman. We have
> > "ranked choice voting" for the first time, and there's no telling how the
> > contest among 13 candidates (8 of them serious) will come out.
>
> My impression is that in the US blacks are viewed as another kind of
> american, often a kind discriminated against. Over here most blacks are not
> viewed as portuguese - except of course for the small part who have lived
> all their lives among white peers. But as the majority of black folks here
> are now natural born, that view is changing. NB that when I say they're not
> viewed as portuguese (but rather as naturals of wherever they or their
> parents came from), that isn't necessarily with a negative spin - the
> english don't view the scots as english, yet that doesn't always carry
> negativity with it.
>
> I saw a piece today, on the election you refer to, and had to remind myself
> it was not to replace the disgraced governor, but rather the mayor. Do you
> have term limits for that?

Unfortunately we have term limits (2 four-year terms) for every city office..
It was passed (while I was in Chicago) because of a media campaign
financed by Ron Lauder, the cosmetics heir and rightwing funder. (Like
the Koch Brothers but smaller.) I think the point was to ensure that David
Dinkins, the city's first black mayor, couldn't have a third term. (But, surprise
surprise, somehow Giuliani beat him in his first reelection bid..) So Giuliani
was the victim of the rightwing manipulation. He was "America's Mayor"
because he was perceived as having led the city through the first few crisis
months after 9/11 (in fact the 2001 mayoral primary was on that day. They
discarded the votes that had been cast in the first 3-4 hours and did it two
weeks later instead. It got moved to June after that because "the week after
the Labor Day weekend holiday" was a dumb day to have had the primary on
anyway.)

In what should have been recognized as a harbinger of his future, he tried
to get himself named "emergency mayor" and postpone the November
election that year. So he was out after two terms. Then came Bloomberg
-- a lot smarter than Rudi, he found the lawyers who could wangle a one-
time exception to term limits, so we had him for 12 years. Then de Blasio.
(Who wouldn't have been reelected this year anyway.)

NYS doesn't have term limits. Cuomo has to decide whether his alleged
scandals are a sufficient deterrent to his running for another term.

I'm pretty sure NJ is going to reelect Gov. Murphy this year -- the first time
a Democratic governor will have a second term in decades --- because
every republican governor spends money but won't raise taxes, leaving it
up to the Democratic successor to clean up the budgetary mess. But
Murphy has been excellent on covid, got marijuana legalization through
the legislature, etc.

Op 22/06/2021 om 17:49 schreef Ruud Harmsen:
> Tue, 22 Jun 2021 05:48:05 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
> <grammatim@verizon.net> scribeva:
>
>> On Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 2:15:16 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>>> Mon, 21 Jun 2021 21:13:39 -0000 (UTC): António Marques
>>> <anton...@sapo.pt> scribeva:
>>>> whereas dogs or sheep or goats or cows use completely
>>>> different words
>>> They do? In fairy tales, yes.
>> They do in English for farm animals, where the distinction
>> is important.
> They? Dogs and sheep and goats and cows?

You persist on spoiling an ergative-ish statement with a lame
absolutive-ish joke?

(Was about Antonio's:) "Where an -a/-o alternative exists, it's usually
reserved for a different species. Cats, mice and bats are about the only
common animals that can use the pattern, whereas dogs or sheep or goats
or cows use completely different words for each sex."

Now for the influence of grammatical gender on one's view of the world,
a few examples concerning my language.

Take the NL-Dutch genderlessness of de-words vs. the BE-Flemish
genderedness.
For me, tables and rooms and seas and provinces are
'naturally'/grammatically feminine, whereas chairs and floors and oceans
and states are masculine. For a Dutchman, all are 'common gender' ~
masculine. So, if a Dutch person says or writes
"Can we move the table°? I want him° in the other room. Is that room°°
ready? Yes, he°° is ready.",
then it rubs against my linguistic fur, but we are used to it. If a
Fleming uses the 'proper' feminine pronouns most Dutch won't accept it,
and it has to be cleaned up in the printer's copy. Now don't tell me
that this doesn't point to some different way of, well, looking at the
world.

Dutch gender is derailing completely anyway: after pronoun gender
sensitivity has disappeared earlier it is by now mutating.
Many *neuter* het-words are nowadays being referred to with *feminine*
pronouns, the 'verharing' (using haar/zij):
*Het comité* publiceerde *haar* jaarboek; the committee published 'her'
yearbook.
Many de-woords are nowadays referred to with the *neuter* pronoun "het",
the English way (!), what I call the 'verhetting':
*De regering* zegt dat *het* morgen hierover zal communiceren; the
government says "it" will communicate to-morrow about this.
Dunno where it will end, but some regendering it's going to be. But for
now all this hurts my PTG (personal language feel).

--

guido wugi

Op 21/06/2021 om 22:52 schreef António Marques:
> Are those the same type of listeners who were set back by the existence of
> gender-specific words, so that now we can have no more actresses and
> poetesses?

I suppose no English-speaker recognises the feminine gender origin in
words like gangster (that would be mainly men), roadster (that's no
person), spinster (a women ok, but not because of the -ster).

In Flemish we may toy with feminine (and innocent:) voetgangers en
[voet]-gangsters.

--

guido wugi

wugi <brol@wugi.be> wrote:
>
> Now for the influence of grammatical gender on one's view of the world,
> a few examples concerning my language.
>
> Take the NL-Dutch genderlessness of de-words vs. the BE-Flemish
> genderedness.
> For me, tables and rooms and seas and provinces are
> 'naturally'/grammatically feminine, whereas chairs and floors and oceans
> and states are masculine. For a Dutchman, all are 'common gender' ~
> masculine. So, if a Dutch person says or writes
> "Can we move the table°? I want him° in the other room. Is that room°°
> ready? Yes, he°° is ready.",
> then it rubs against my linguistic fur, but we are used to it. If a
> Fleming uses the 'proper' feminine pronouns most Dutch won't accept it,
> and it has to be cleaned up in the printer's copy. Now don't tell me
> that this doesn't point to some different way of, well, looking at the
> world.

Doesn't it rather point to the opposite? How do the flamingos and the
netherpeople engage the world differently, as they should be doing if it
were true?

Tue, 22 Jun 2021 23:42:18 +0200: wugi <brol@wugi.be> scribeva:

>Fleming uses the 'proper' feminine pronouns most Dutch won't accept it,
>and it has to be cleaned up in the printer's copy. Now don't tell me
>that this doesn't point to some different way of, well, looking at the
>world.

I tell you it doesn't point to a different way at looking at the
world. It's language convention, a habit, and the table stays the
same.