Re: The Birds and the Bees of Gender

At 01:37 30/03/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Could someone please explain gender to me (as it relates to language). I
>just can't seem to understand the necessity of verb - noun agreement.
>Doesn't it just add a whole stratum of complexity? Why must there really
>be a 'le' and a 'la' in French? English is an asexual language, isn't
>it? Why is this so if it is a Germanic language with influences from
>French?
>
        Gender in languages relates to the classification of "objects" in a
language. Some languages, like Swahili, have many classes where "objects"
are listed, depending on common points like shape, animation (objects vs.
living things), or the fact that they don't fit to another class! Gender
systems are often the simplification of a former complex class system (it
may be so even in Indo-European). And yes, it is often unnecessary and
complex (for people who are not accustomed to it, I am French and I don't
find the French gender system, despite its lack of sensibility, too
difficult to handle) adding problems like noun-verb agreement or
noun-adjective agreement. But let me ask you a question? Do you find the
plural system in English necessary, or do you think that it only adds a
whole stratum of unnecessary complexity? You will certainly find it
sensible to mark nouns for plural. But for a Japanese speaker, it is a
difficulty that doesn't exist in their language, and they think they don't
need it (and in fact, they do it very well without plural), and when they
learn English, they just say: but why must I always use the plural even
when I think number is irrelevant? Why must I use the plural when I count
objects? I use a number, so I don't need to add the plural to the noun.
Everybody knows with the number that there are several objects...

        I just said that to show you that questions about the necessity of the
gender system are generally pointless. Why does French have a gender
system? Because Latin had one, and French didn't lose it much. Why has
English nearly totally lost its gender system? Who knows? Maybe the sound
changes ruined it. There is no necessity in it. Language has nothing to do
with necessity. A language is what it is because it has evolved from
another language that was what it was. There's nothing more to say.
Language has to do with history, not necessity. Of course it would be
simpler to have no grammatical gender, but when we compare French and
English as a whole, which language is more complex and difficult? French,
with its gender system and its subject-verb agreement conjugation, or
English, with its difficult phonology and its bunch of irregular verbs? As
for complexity, you can't compare bits of grammar of different languages.
You must compare languages as a whole, and you will find that finally,
different languages are just as complex as any others. Their difficulties
are not the same, that's all.

        I hope I helped to de-confuse you a bit.

>Please help,
>Michael the Gender Confused
>
>
                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

homepage : http://www.bde.espci.fr/homepage/Christophe.Grandsire/index.html