Re: Gender in Pronouns
Rob Zook 
Tue, 13 Oct 1998 15:09:27 -0500

Saul Epstein wrote:
> 
> Hello, all.
> 
> I'm starting to work on a new description of the part of the ZC
> Grammar that includes pronouns, and I am once again reminded that I
> don't like part of it.
> 
> As originally stated, pronouns are distinguished in 3 genders in the
> 3rd person: he/these men, she/these women, and it/these things. On its
> face, this distinction seems to prevent the possibility of referring
> to a person in the abstract, as it were, without specifying gender,
> and to prevent the possibility of referring to a group of people which
> includes both genders without generalizing (and excluding one or the
> other). The set of affixes looks like this:
> 
>       masculine   feminine   neuter
>          w           wl        n
> 
> I've been thinking about it and, if we can agree this is a problem,
> I've arrived at two solutions. The first is to create a fourth
> category of distinction, something like "general sentient" which would
> refer to a person or people without specifying gender. The set of
> affixes might look something like:
> 
>             sentient             | non-sentient
>   -------------------------------+-------------
>   general | feminine | masculine |
>   --------+----------+-----------|      n
>      w    |    l     |     r     |
> 
> The second solution is to allow the neuter to include sentient things.
> In other words, a hypothetical person would be an "it" just like an
> actual or hypothetical thing. A group of people of mixed gender would
> also be "things." So then we would have:
> 
>      masculine   feminine   (n)either/both
>         w           wl            n
> 
> The chief advantage to the first solution seems to be that it allows
> greater precision. The chief advantage to the second solution seems to
> be that we don't have to adopt any surface changes, only a change in
> the way the surface is understood.
> 
> I welcome any comments...

Well, I would favor the first solution, but I advocate keeping the
current suffixes for masculine, feminine and neuter non-sentient, and 
creating a new suffix for neuter sentient.

However, if that's unacceptable, I still think we should at least
address the problem by modifying the meaning of the neuter non-sentient
to include sentients as well.


Rob Z.