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Assigned gender in a corpus of nineteenth-century correspondence among settlers in the American Great Plains

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This contribution explores the use of the formal resources of English (third-person singular pronouns in anaphora, sex-sensitive collocations) for “assigned gender” in a corpus of letters written by settlers of the Great Plains of the United States in the last decades of the nineteenth century. The textual work is introduced by a discussion of significant theoretical aspects of the grammatical category of gender and of certain methodological issues – particularly “Units of Anaphoric Reference”. Although assigned gender has been approached from a general perspective, particular attention has been paid to two specific usages: the feminine pronoun as an indicator of colloquial American English, and the neuter pronoun as a frequent (and possibly patterned) choice for nouns like baby or child.

  • Affiliations: 1: University of León, Spain

References

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    2003 Engendering female visibility in German. In Marlis Hellinger & Hadumod Buβmann (eds.), Gender across languages I, 141–174. 
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    1988 Prairie schoolwomen, mid-1850s to 1920s, in Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. Great Plains Quarterly 8. 102–119.
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  9. Curme, George O. & Hans Kurath
    1931 A grammar of the English language. New York: D. C. Heath & Co.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Dahl, Östen
    2000 Animacy and the notion of semantic gender. In Barbara Unterbeck & Matti Rissanen (eds.), Gender in grammar and cognition, 99–115. Berlin: De Gruyter. doi: 10.1515/9783110802603.99
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110802603.99 [Google Scholar]
  11. Dossena, Marina
    2012 Sense and sensibility: Verbal morpho-syntax in nineteenth-century Scottish emigrants’ letters and the intersection of standard and vernacular usage. Token: A Journal of English Linguistics1. 24–36.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Dossena, Marina & Charles Jones
    (eds.) 2003 Insights into Late Modern English. Bern: Peter Lang.
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  13. Guzmán-González, Trinidad
    1989 El género atribuido en lengua inglesa: Textos poéticos de los siglos XVIII, XIX y XX [Assigned gender in English: Poetical texts from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries]. PhD diss., University of León.
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  20. Hellinger, Marlis & Hadumod Buβmann
    2003 Gender across languages. The linguistic representation of women and men. In Marlis Hellinger & Hadumod Buβmann (eds.), Gender across language I, 1–25. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/impact.11.05hel
     https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.11.05hel [Google Scholar]
  21. Hogg, Richard
    2002 An introduction to Old English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum
    2002 The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Langenfelt, Gösta
    1951  She and her instead of it and its . Anglia70. 90–101.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Mathiot, M
    1979 Sex roles as revealed through referential gender in American English. In 
Madeleine Mathiot (ed.), Ethnolinguistics: Boas, Sapir and Whorf revisited, 1–48. The Hague: Mouton.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Monroe, Paul
    (ed.) 1911–1914 A cyclopedia of education. New York: The MacMillan Company.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Quirk, Randolph , et al.
    1985 A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Siemund, Peter
    2008 Pronominal gender in English. A study of English varieties from a cross-linguistic perspective. London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Singer, R
    2010 Creativity in the use of gender agreement in Mawng. Studies in Language34(2). 382–416. doi: 10.1075/sl.34.2.06sin
     https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.34.2.06sin [Google Scholar]
  29. Steinmetz, Donald
    2006 Gender shifts in Germanic and Slavic: Semantic motivation for neuter?Lingua116. 1418–1440. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2004.06.014
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2004.06.014 [Google Scholar]
  30. Svartengren, T. Hilding
    1927 The feminine gender for inanimate things in Anglo-American. American Speech III(2). 83–113. doi: 10.2307/451510
     https://doi.org/10.2307/451510 [Google Scholar]
  31. Thráinsson, Höskuldur
    2007 The syntax of Icelandic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511619441
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511619441 [Google Scholar]
  32. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
    2009 An introduction to Late Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Upton, Clive , et al.
    1994 Survey of English dialects I: The dictionary and grammar. London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Verdaguer, Isabel et al.
    2013 SciE-Lex: A lexical database. In Isabel Verdaguer et al. (eds.), Biomedical English: A corpus-based approach, 21–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/scl.56.02ver
     https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.56.02ver [Google Scholar]
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    1977 A handbook of English grammar. London: Longman.
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References

  1. The Uriah W. Oblinger Collection
    . InPrairie settlement: Nebraska photographs and family letters 1862–1912. www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/prairie-settlement/history.html (accessedNovember 2013).
     [Google Scholar]
  2. Eliot, Jane Evans
    . Diary entryTuesday, September 1861 InCivilian war time. North Carolina Dept. of Cultural Resources. civilianwartime.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/night-with-its-%E2%80%9Csable-curtains%E2%80%9D-has-gathered-around-us-cw150/ (accessedNovember 2013).
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Kentuckian
    1862 Document 136. Siege of Cotton Hill. In Frank Moore (ed.), The rebellion record, 301. New York: G. P. Putnam.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. TWBa: An argument that will not hold water
    . Toledo Weekly Blade, Thursday, August 12th 1886 4.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. TWBb: The rising tide of prohibition
    . Toledo Weekly Blade, Thursday, August 19th 1886 4.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. Buβmann, Hadumod & Marlis Hellinger
    2003 Engendering female visibility in German. In Marlis Hellinger & Hadumod Buβmann (eds.), Gender across languages I, 141–174. 
Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/impact.11.10bus
     https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.11.10bus [Google Scholar]
  7. Contini-Morava, Ellen & Marcin Kilarski
    2013 Functions of nominal classification. Language Sciences40. 263–299. doi: 10.1016/j.langsci.2013.03.002
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2013.03.002 [Google Scholar]
  8. Cordier, Mary Hulburt
    1988 Prairie schoolwomen, mid-1850s to 1920s, in Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. Great Plains Quarterly 8. 102–119.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. Curme, George O. & Hans Kurath
    1931 A grammar of the English language. New York: D. C. Heath & Co.
     [Google Scholar]
  10. Dahl, Östen
    2000 Animacy and the notion of semantic gender. In Barbara Unterbeck & Matti Rissanen (eds.), Gender in grammar and cognition, 99–115. Berlin: De Gruyter. doi: 10.1515/9783110802603.99
     https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110802603.99 [Google Scholar]
  11. Dossena, Marina
    2012 Sense and sensibility: Verbal morpho-syntax in nineteenth-century Scottish emigrants’ letters and the intersection of standard and vernacular usage. Token: A Journal of English Linguistics1. 24–36.
     [Google Scholar]
  12. Dossena, Marina & Charles Jones
    (eds.) 2003 Insights into Late Modern English. Bern: Peter Lang.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. Guzmán-González, Trinidad
    1989 El género atribuido en lengua inglesa: Textos poéticos de los siglos XVIII, XIX y XX [Assigned gender in English: Poetical texts from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries]. PhD diss., University of León.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. 1999 Gender, grammar and poetry: Early 17th-century miscellanies in the light of historical sociolinguistics. In María Fuencisla García-Bermejo 
Giner (ed.), Sederi X: In memoriam Patricia Shaw, 37–46. Salamanca: Sederi/Universidad de Salamanca.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. 2002 Feminine assigned gender for ships: Just a metaphor?In Isabel Moskowich-Spiegel et al. (eds.), Re-Interpretations of English: Essays on language, linguistics and philology (I), 45–62. A Coruña: Universidade da Coruña.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. 2012a “Ic Ælfric wolde Þas lytlan boc a-wendan to Engliscum ge-reorde…”: A translator, a grammarian, a teacher. In Juan J. Lanero & José L. Chamosa (eds.), Lengua, traducción, recepción. En honor de Julio César Santoyo / Language, translation, reception. To honor Julio César Santoyo (II), 247–266. León: Universidad de León.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. 2012b Assigned gender in eighteenth-century prose: A corpus study. In Nila Vázquez (ed.), Creation and use of historical linguistic corpora in Spain, 269–291. Newcastle u. T.: Cambridge Scholars.
     [Google Scholar]
  18. 2013a Gender assignment in present-day scientific English: A case study in the field of zoology journals. In Isabel Verdaguer et al. (eds.), Biomedical English: A corpus-based approach, 145–163. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/scl.56.08guz
     https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.56.08guz [Google Scholar]
  19. 2013b Gender, grammar, social networks and Robert Lowth. In Daniel García Velasco et al. (eds.), A life in language. Estudios en homenaje al profesor José Luis González Escribano, 197–222. Oviedo: Ediciones de la Universidad de Oviedo.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Hellinger, Marlis & Hadumod Buβmann
    2003 Gender across languages. The linguistic representation of women and men. In Marlis Hellinger & Hadumod Buβmann (eds.), Gender across language I, 1–25. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/impact.11.05hel
     https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.11.05hel [Google Scholar]
  21. Hogg, Richard
    2002 An introduction to Old English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum
    2002 The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Langenfelt, Gösta
    1951  She and her instead of it and its . Anglia70. 90–101.
     [Google Scholar]
  24. Mathiot, M
    1979 Sex roles as revealed through referential gender in American English. In 
Madeleine Mathiot (ed.), Ethnolinguistics: Boas, Sapir and Whorf revisited, 1–48. The Hague: Mouton.
     [Google Scholar]
  25. Monroe, Paul
    (ed.) 1911–1914 A cyclopedia of education. New York: The MacMillan Company.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Quirk, Randolph , et al.
    1985 A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Siemund, Peter
    2008 Pronominal gender in English. A study of English varieties from a cross-linguistic perspective. London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  28. Singer, R
    2010 Creativity in the use of gender agreement in Mawng. Studies in Language34(2). 382–416. doi: 10.1075/sl.34.2.06sin
     https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.34.2.06sin [Google Scholar]
  29. Steinmetz, Donald
    2006 Gender shifts in Germanic and Slavic: Semantic motivation for neuter?Lingua116. 1418–1440. doi: 10.1016/j.lingua.2004.06.014
     https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2004.06.014 [Google Scholar]
  30. Svartengren, T. Hilding
    1927 The feminine gender for inanimate things in Anglo-American. American Speech III(2). 83–113. doi: 10.2307/451510
     https://doi.org/10.2307/451510 [Google Scholar]
  31. Thráinsson, Höskuldur
    2007 The syntax of Icelandic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9780511619441
     https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511619441 [Google Scholar]
  32. Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid
    2009 An introduction to Late Modern English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  33. Upton, Clive , et al.
    1994 Survey of English dialects I: The dictionary and grammar. London: Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  34. Verdaguer, Isabel et al.
    2013 SciE-Lex: A lexical database. In Isabel Verdaguer et al. (eds.), Biomedical English: A corpus-based approach, 21–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/scl.56.02ver
     https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.56.02ver [Google Scholar]
  35. Zandvoort, Reinard W
    1977 A handbook of English grammar. London: Longman.
     [Google Scholar]

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