What's the point of gendered words in certain languages?
What's the point of gendered words in certain languages?
I know a lot of languages have some aspects that probably seem a bit strange to non-native speakers…in the case of gendered words is there a point other than “just the way its always been” that explains it a bit better?
I don’t have gendered words in my native language, and from the outside looking in I’m not sure what gendered words actually provide in terms of context? Is there more to it that I’m not quite following?
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There are two main points: agreement and derivation.
Agreement: grammatical gender gives you an easy way to keep track of which word refers to which. Consider for example the following sentence:
- The clock fell over the glass table, and it broke.
What does "it" refer to? It's ambiguous, it could be either "the clock" or "the glass table" (both things are breakable). In Portuguese however the sentence is completely unambiguous due to the gender system, as the translations show:
- O relógio caiu sobre a mesa de vidro, e ele quebrou. // "ele" he/it = the clock
- O relógio caiu sobre a mesa de vidro, e ela quebrou. // "ela" she/it = the table
It's only one word of difference; however "ele" he/it must refer to "relógio" clock due to the gender agreement. Same deal with "ela" she/it and "mesa" table.
Latin also shows something similar, due to the syntactically free word order. Like this:
- puer bellam puellam amat. (boy.M.NOM pretty.F.ACC girl.F.ACC loves) = the boy loves the beautiful girl
- puer bellus puellam amat. (boy.M.NOM pretty.M.NOM girl.F.ACC loves) = the handsome boy loves the girl
Note how the adjective between "puer" boy and "puella" girl could theoretically refer to any of those nouns; Latin is not picky with adjective placement, as long as it's near the noun it's fine. However, because "puer" is a masculine word and "puella" is feminine, we know that the adjective refers to one if masculine, another if feminine. (Note: the case marks reinforce this, but they aren't fully reliable.)
The second aspect that I mentioned is derivation: gender gives you a quick way to create more words, without needing new roots for that. Italian examples:
- "bambino" boy vs. "bambina" girl
- "gatto" cat, tomcat vs. "gatta" female cat
- "banana" banana (fruit) vs. "banano" banana plant
- "mela" apple (fruit) vs. "melo" apple tree
Focus on the last two lines - note how the gender system is reused to things that (from human PoV) have no sex or social gender, like trees and their fruits. This kind of extension of the derivation system is fairly common across gendered languages.
Addressing some comments here: English does not have a grammatical gender system. It has a few words that refer to social gender and sex, but both concepts (grammatical gender and social gender) are completely distinct.
That's specially evident when triggering agreement in a gendered language, as English doesn't do anything similar. Portuguese examples, again:
- [Sentence] O Ivan é uma pessoa muito alta.
- [Gloss, showing word gender] The.M Ivan.M is a.F person.F very tall.F
- [Translation] Ivan is a very tall person.
Check the adjective, "alta" tall. Even if "Ivan" refers to a man, you need to use the feminine adjective here, because it needs to agree with "pessoa" person - a feminine word. This kind of stuff happens all the time in gendered languages, but you don't see it e.g. in English.
Thank you for this wonderful explanation and for taking the time to write it.
That's the kind of content that make this place so awesome.
Holy smoke, thanks for taking the time to write this comment. I wasn't aware there are practical implications of using gendered nouns. Learned something new today.
Really great comment, thank you for the effort you put into this. That said, I can't say I feel convinced by the reasoning. Are you suggesting that gender in these languages was an intentional decision to solve the problems you raise? Because as other comments point out, it seems it's still very possible to have an ambiguous sentence making this seem like an overly confusing addition.
Secondly in your example of gendered language assisting in derivation, surely this ends up with the same problems given that the language only represents a limited number of genders? I do not remotely know Portuguese, but how does this derivation quality help with the word for an apple seed? I presume the same logic can't apply?
Thanks for your time!
you suggesting that gender in these languages was an intentional decision to solve the problems you raise?
No, I'm not suggesting intention or decision. Most of the time, language works a lot like a biological species: there's no critter or speaker deciding "we shall have this feature!", but instead the feature spreads or goes extinct depending on the role that it performs in the language, alongside other features.
My explanation is all about that role. That is the point of grammatical gender, and it explains:
- why it appeared independently across different languages? Clearly the gender systems in Dyirbal, in most Indo-European languages, in [most?] Afro-Asiatic languages are unrelated to each other, but why did they develop that same feature?
- why it survives for so long in a language? For example, the gender system in Russian, Hindi and Spanish backtracks all the way back into Late Proto-Indo-European (6000? years ago).
A pointless feature wouldn't do it.
I do not remotely know Portuguese, but how does this derivation quality help with the word for an apple seed?
The fruit vs. plant example is from Italian, not Portuguese (see note*).
It doesn't need to help with the word for an apple seed (IT: seme di mela, lit. "seed of apple"). It's just an extension, a "bonus" of the system; the core is like bambino/bambina, words referring to human beings, we humans tend to speak a lot about each other.
That said, your question reminds me the noun classes of Bantu languages. Gender is just a specific type of noun class; it's possible that some language out there would actually use a noun class derivation of their word for apple to refer to apple seeds.
*note, on Portuguese
Fruit trees in Portuguese get an "origin" suffix, -eira; see e.g. maçã (apple) vs. macieira (apple tree) vs. semente de maçã (apple seed). There are a few nouns where the feminine is a specific type of the masculine, like
- ovo (egg) vs. ova (fish eggs)
- casco (shell) vs. casca (bark, peel)
- jarro (jar) vs. jarra (a type of jar, usually with a pointy lip)
- barco (boat) vs. barca (barque)
but that feature was only rarely used, and it is certainly not productive; I think that it backtracks to Latin neuter but I'm not sure. Anyway, derivation in the modern language is mostly restricted to critters and people.
Languages involved naturally. Nothing is an intentional decision.
Yes, it's still possible to have ambiguity, just like you can have hash collisions in hash tables. But it at least sometimes helps.
Thank you, Today I learned that grammatical gender can in fact have purpose. Some questions though:
In that first example for Agreement, does this depend on the nouns in question coincidentally having different gender, or does the grammar enforce that? (Such as switching one if they would otherwise match - although that might conflict with the Derivation thing.) And can a sentence in those languages refer to 3 or more nouns? That would seem to break the disambiguation effect.
does this depend on the nouns in question coincidentally having different gender
Yup - the example wouldn't work if both nouns had the same gender. And gender is intrinsic to the noun, you can't change it (you can change the noun though).
That's why, usually, languages with a productive gender system keep a comparable amount of nouns in each gender, since this maximises the odds that multiple nouns in the same sentence got different genders.
And can a sentence in those languages refer to 3 or more nouns?
Yup, they can.
In both cases (same gender nouns, or 3+ nouns), the solution is typically the same as in a non-gendered language: you use the noun instead of a pronoun, or rely on context to disambiguate it.
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That was a great, concise, technical but simple at the same time explanation, beautifully done. Thanks.
Thanks!
That was very informative, thank you! I learned a bit of Esperanto, and I think Zamenhof was really aware about the derivation part. It really makes learning a new language easier if words with a similar meaning share a root.
Holy hell. Did you just type that out?
Did you just type that out?
Yup. That's why I'm leveraging examples from PT/IT/Lat.
Bravo. Thanks for taking the time