1887
  1. Home
  2. e-Journals
  3. ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics
  4. Volume 111, Issue 1
  5. Article
Volume 111, Issue 1
  • ISSN 0019-0829
  • E-ISSN: 1783-1490
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

In English,inanimate referents that are not clearly defined in terms of sex-related attributes do not seem readily classifiable into feminine or masculine categories.

The present study of gender use by American speakers tested the gender connotations of English inanimate referents commonly considered or perceived as "neuter".

The results suggest that, when a noun is strongly connoted the natural gender rule applies, showing more salience for women than for men. However, contrary to the findings of current research, when the inanimate noun is conceived as neuter it is not necessarily labeled as masculine. Women are more likely than men to classify inanimate referents into feminine and masculine categories, and a confidence level test revealed that answers were more often random for male respondents while females tended to favor the feminine category. In light of this feminization tendency, this study suggests that in addition to its major function as a reference-tracking device, gender could be used as a "status marker".

© 1996 John Benjamins Publishing Company
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/itl.111-112.03zou
1996-01-01
2024-09-14

  • From This Site

    /content/journals/10.1075/itl.111-112.03zou
    dcterms_title,dcterms_subject,pub_keyword
    -contentType:Journal -contentType:Contributor -contentType:Concept -contentType:Institution
    10
    5
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. CORBETT, G. G.
    (1988) Gender. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  2. CORNISH, F.
    (1986) Anaphoric relations in English and French: A discourse perspective. London: Croom Helm.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. ERVIN, S.M.
    (1962) The connotations of gender. Word, 18.
     [Google Scholar]
  4. GREENBERG, J.H.
    (1966) Language universals: with special reference to feature hierarchies. The Hague: Mouton.
     [Google Scholar]
  5. HALL, R.A.
    (1965) The "neuter" in Romance: a pseudo-problem. Word21.
     [Google Scholar]
  6. HOCKETT, C.F.
    (1958) A course in modern linguistics. New York: McMillan.
     [Google Scholar]
  7. IBRAHIM, M.H.
    (1973) Grammatical gender. The Hague: Mouton.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. JAKOBSON, R.
    (1966) On translation. New York: Oxford University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  9. LEHRER, A.
    (1985) Markedness and antonymy. Journal of Linguistics, 21 (2).
     [Google Scholar]
  10. LYONS, J.
    (1977) Semantics, II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  11. MACKAY, D.G.
    (1980) On the goals, principles and procedures for prescriptive grammar: Singular they. Language in Society, 9 (3).
     [Google Scholar]
  12. MILLS, A.E.
    (1986) The acquisition of gender: A study of English and German. Berlin: Springer.
     [Google Scholar]
  13. SLOBIN, D.I.
    (1986a) The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
     [Google Scholar]
  14. SPENCE, N.C.W.
    (1980) The gender of French Compounds. Zeitschrift für romanische philologie. 96.
     [Google Scholar]
  15. TUCKER G.R. , LAMBERT W.E. , RIGAULT A.A.
    (1977) The French speaker's skill with grammatical gender: an example of rule-governed behavior. The Hague; Paris: Mouton.
     [Google Scholar]
  16. WIESE, B.
    (1983) Anaphora by pronouns. Linguistics, 21.
     [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/itl.111-112.03zou
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): English.; First/Second Language acquisition; Grammatical gender; Natural gender

Most Cited

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error