Re: Gender (was: Homosexuality and gender identity)
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, May 28, 2003, 10:40 |
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En réponse à John Cowan :
>There is an interesting sort-of parallel in French: the normal 3pl pronoun
>for groups of human beings is "ils" (m.) and "elles" (f.) is used only for
>groups containing females only.
>
>However, in legal writing one finds "elles" being applied to groups,
>referring back to the antecedent "personnes"; when the antecedent gets
>far enough away, the writer sometimes forgets and writes "personnes ...
>elles ... elles ... ils ... ils ... ils".
Indeed. Actually, the fact that "personne" is a feminine word is a strong
source of difficulties for people, as they don't know what pronoun to use
when "personne" refers to a man. Personally, when I use it, I prefer to
refer a second time to the person with a "correctly" gendered noun (or the
name of that person) so that next time I can use the proper pronoun without
feeling uneasy about it.
Christophe Grandsire.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.
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