Grammatical gender

“ Many a German and Frenchman wishes he could follow the example of our English forefathers who, long ago, threw overboard the whole worthless cargo of grammatical gender. But, looking at gender in the ancient grammars, it must be remembered that human custom is hardly ever willfully absurd, its unreasonableness usually arising from loss or confusion of old sense. ”

“ If this explanation be right, analogy has brought into the Indo-European languages the useless multiplication of gender marks in such sentences as the Latin hae pulcrae feminae caesae suet, where the feminine gender is indicated no less than four times without any obvious gain over the English These fair women were slain, where grammatical gender is no longer obviously indicated at all. ”

“ Grammatical Gender.
15. Grammatical gender is determined not by sex, but by the general signification of the word, or the ending of its Nominative Singular. By grammatical gender, nouns denoting things or qualities are often Masculine or Feminine, simply by virtue of their signification or the ending of the Nominative Singular. The following are the general principles for determining grammatical gender:—
A. Gender determined by Signification.
1. Names of Rivers, Winds, and Months are Masculine; as,—
Sēquana, Seine ”

“ A consideration of the way in which these irregularities arise may help us to understand the origin of the grammatical categories, to which we now proceed.
Gender.
The foundation of grammatical gender is the natural distinction between the sexes in mankind and animals. Fancy may endow other objects or qualities with sex; but sex, whether fanciful or real, has no proper connection with grammar. ”

“ But genders, in grammar, are attributes of words, rather than of persons, or animals, or things; whereas sexes are attributes, not of words, but of living creatures. He who understands this, will perceive that the absence of sex in some things, is as good a basis for a grammatical distinction, as the presence or the difference of it in others; nor can it be denied, that the neuter, according to my definition, is a gender, is a distinction "in regard to sex," though it does not embrace either of the sexes. ”

“ Once more, although the formal apparatus which used to serve for the expression of grammatical gender in our nouns and adjectives has gone out of employment and been forgotten, yet the ever-recurring use of he, she, and it in reference to all the subjects of thought classifies them in our minds as masculine, feminine, and neuter, and puts the distinctions of the two sexes, or the want of sex, before us as calling for constant notice and designation ”

“ Besides case distinctions the older Aryan languages have a rather complicated system of gender distinctions, which in many instances agrees with, but in many others is totally independent of, and even may be completely at war with, the natural distinction between male beings, female beings and things without sex. This grammatical gender is sometimes looked upon as something valuable for a language to possess ”

“ To illustrate this important point, let us remember the system of grammatical gender in Greek or Gennan, how irrationally a classification by sex is applied to sexless objects and thoughts, while even the use of a neuter gender fails to set the confusion straight, and sometimes even twists it with a new perversity o| its own. ”

“ Lily makes it out, that in Latin there are seven: yet, with no great consistency, he will have a gender to be a or the distinction of sex. "GENUS est sexus discretio. Et sunt genera numero septem."--Lilii Gram., p. 10. That is, "GENDER is the distinction of sex. And the genders are seven in number." Ruddiman says, "GENUS est, discrimen nominis secundum sexum, vel ejus in structurâ grammaticâ imitatio. Genera nominum sunt tria."--Ruddimanni Gram., p. 4. That is, "GENDER is the diversity of the noun according to sex, or [it is] the imitation of it in grammatical structure. ”

“ A remarkable example of the total abandonment of a conspicuous department of grammatical structure, without any compensating substitution, is furnished in our treatment of the matter of gender. The grammatical distinction of words as masculine, feminine, or neuter, by differences of termination and differences of declension, had been from the very earliest period the practice of all the languages of the family to which the English belongs. ”

“ If it is asked why the elaborate Old English system of [269] cases and genders has gradually disappeared, an answer that will meet with the approval of most linguists of the ordinary school is (in the words of J. A. H. Murray) : “The total loss of grammatical gender in English, and the almost complete disappearance of cases, are purely phonetic phenomena”—supplemented, of course, by the recognition of the action of analogy, to which is due, for instance, the levelling of the nom. and dative plural OE. stanas and stanum under the single form stones. ”

“ As Sex is a natural characteristic pertaining to living objects, so gender is a grammatical characteristic pertaining to nouns, the names of objects whether animate or inanimate. The gender of nouns is not, properly speaking, indicated; it is constituted by that of the attributives conjoined with them. If there were no distinction of gender in adjectives, participles, &c. there could be none in nouns. When we say that amor is a noun of the masculine gender, and cupido a noun of the feminine gender, we do not mean to intimate any distinction between the things signified by these nouns ”

“ There is no rule whereby to tell the gender of a word, except in the case of animate objects, where the gender simply follows the sex.
There are only three grammatical cases in which gender matters at all.
1. When a noun or an adjective preceding a noun is preceded by the article an, the. If the noun or adjective is masculine singular or the noun feminine, or the adjective of either, plural, its initial remains in the first state. If the noun or adjective is feminine singular or the noun is masculine plural, [78] it is changed to the second state. ”

“ Cerebral determinism This notion is linked to human physiology.
We observe, in most cultures, the grammatical division of nouns into masculine and feminine, and in all cultures, the semantic division of names and objects into male and female. It means that gender is an innate sense people have of themselves and others, including animals and objects. ”

“ Masculine and Feminine are the only Proper Genders. Neuter Gender means of neither Gender, and includes the great mass of Common Nouns, or the Thing World, as distinguished from Personality.
Reversing the order, and resuming the above discriminations in the two domains, Language and the Universe, they are as follows: [Pg 700]
Again, in this Concrete World, the world of Persons and Things, Number reappears, and guides the next great Grammatical division of Nouns Substantive ”

“ It is a great pity that our language is so poor in the terminations that denote gender. Were we to say of a woman that she is a rogue, a knave, a scamp, or a vagabond, we feel that we should use, not only strong but improper expressions. Yet we have no corresponding terms to apply, in case of necessity, to the female. Why is this? Doubtless because we never want them. For the same reason, our forefathers transmitted to us the words, philosopher, astronomer, philologer, and so forth, without any feminine equivalent. ”

“ There is, in truth, but two genders, and those confined to animals. When we break these rules, and follow the undirected wanderings of fancy, we can form no rules to regulate our words. We may have as many fanciful ones as we please, but they will not apply in common practice. For example: poets and artists have usually attached female loveliness to angels, and placed them in the feminine gender. But they are invariably used in the masculine thro out the scriptures. ”

“ Once more, why has not the French Academy systematized the genders? No one who considers language as an instrument of thought, which is good in proportion as its special parts are definitely adjusted to special functions, can doubt that a meaningless use of genders is a defect. It is undeniable that to employ marks of gender in ways always suggesting attributes that are possessed, instead of usually suggesting attributes that are not possessed, is an improvement. ”

“ In its conjugations, the pronouns are incorporated with the verb, either as prefixes or suffixes. Its substantives are provided with adjective inflections, denoting size and quality. Its verbs, on the other hand, receive substantive inflections. Gender is, as a rule, lost sight of, in the uniform attempt, to preserve, by inflections, a distinction between animate and inanimate, and personal or impersonal objects. It is remarkable for the variety of its compounds, although the vocabulary itself, is manifestly constructed from monosyllabic roots. ”

“ According to this, we must have five genders, exclusive of that which is called common; namely, the masculine, the feminine, the neuter, the androgynal, and the doubtful.
OBS. 4.—It is plain that many writers on grammar have had but a confused notion of what a gender really is. Some of them, confounding gender with sex, deny that there are more than two genders, because there are only two sexes. ”

“ Thus it is not the word ‘poetess’ which is feminine, but the person indicated who is female. So too ‘daughter’, ‘queen’, are in English not feminine nouns, but nouns designating female persons. Take on the contrary ‘filia’ or ‘regina’, ‘fille’ or ‘reine’; there you have feminine nouns as well as female persons. I need hardly say to you that we did not inherit this simplicity from others, but, like the Danes, in so far as they have done the like, have made it for ourselves. Whether we turn to the Latin, or, which is for us more important, to the old Gothic, we find gender ”

“ But characteristically and predominatingly, Sex is predicated of Humanity, where it is developed in its highest perfection; and in the same degree Gender in Grammar is, in predominance, confined to the Proper Nouns Substantive. ”

“ While studying language, I observed that most of my mistakes in grammar occurred in the feminine gender, and thinking over the cause of it, it dawned upon me that, belonging to the masculine sex, I was in the habit of thinking in that gender, and that my teachers were men, and that my text-books and grammars had been written by men, and that the masculine gender predominated so strongly in the exercises, that it was but natural for me to make the greatest number of mistakes in the gender to which the least attention had been given. ”

“ I flatter myself that all my readers, who are acquainted with any of the ancient or the modern languages which have a distinction of gender in their attributives, will readily perceive that the import of the term Gender, in the grammar of those languages, is precisely what I have stated above. ”

“ Possibly the use of the masculine or feminine forms may never have strictly denoted the sex of the person indicated in words such as brewer, brewster, spinner, spinster, sempster, sempstress, webber, webster, and the gradual disuse of the feminine forms may have been due to the grammatical tendencies in the English language rather than to the changes which were driving women from their place in productive industry ”

“ It seems therefore to be a mis-stated compliment which is usually paid to the English, when it is said that "this is the only language which has adapted the gender of its nouns to the constitution of Nature." The fact is, that it has adapted the Form of some of the most common names of living creatures, and of a few of its pronouns, to the obvious distinction of male, and female, and inanimate, while it has left its nouns without any mark characteristic of gender. The same thing must necessarily happen to any language by abolishing the distinction of masculine and feminine in its attributives. ”

“ The gender of these is usually determined by the context; and they are to be called masculine or feminine accordingly. To such words, some grammarians have applied the unnecessary and improper term common gender. Murray justly observes, "There is no such gender belonging to the language. The business of parsing can be effectually performed, without having recourse to a common gender."—Gram., 8vo. p. 39. The term is more useful, and less liable to objection, as applied to the learned languages; but with us, whose genders distinguish objects in regard to sex, it is plainly a solecism. ”

“ A grammar of living English that was genuinely practical and unbound by tradition would never mention gender except in discussing these three little words. That our grammars specify man as a masculine and woman as a feminine noun is due merely to the fact that in Latin the corresponding words vir and femina possess endings which are recognized as generally masculine and feminine, and that an associated adjective ends respectively in masculine -us or feminine -a. ”

“ A lexic comparison is between vocal elements; a grammatic comparison is between grammatic methods, such, for example, as gender systems. The classes into which things are relegated by distinction of gender may be animate and inanimate, and the animate may subsequently be divided into male and female, and these two classes may ultimately absorb, in part at least, inanimate things. The growth of a system of genders may take another course. ”