Gender Differentiation in Language: Examining English and Arabic Traditions
Gender plays a crucial role in language, with varying approaches in different languages. This analysis delves into the distinctions in treating gender within English and Arabic, showcasing how nouns are categorized as masculine, feminine, or neuter in English, while Arabic has only two genders. The morphological methods used to distinguish gender in both languages, as well as the perspectives on animate and inanimate objects, are explored. The significance of gender in non-personal nouns is also highlighted, revealing a nuanced understanding of gender representation in linguistic expressions.
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Presentation Transcript
GENDER Gender in language = sex in the outside world Living things are with identifiable sex (male or female),whereas inanimates are sexless. Languages are of different orientations towards this category : some are with distinctive genders whereas others don t have such gender recognition. CONTRASTIVE GRAMMAR ... AHMED QADOURY ABED 2/17/2025 2
GENDER English is of THREE genders :masculine , feminine , or neuter Arabic is of TWO genders :masculine or feminine The division in both languages is sometimes performed morphologically by adding suffixes hero heroine - CONTRASTIVE GRAMMAR ... AHMED QADOURY ABED 2/17/2025 3
ENGLISH GENDER Gender in English is realized by SUBSTITUTION, i.e, replacing a personal noun by a pronoun. This led many grammarians to deny that English nouns have gender. No difficulty with suffixed gender nouns Nouns can be divided into ANIMATE and INANIMATE. INANIMATES can easily be replaced by IT or WHICH . Car- it - which CONTRASTIVE GRAMMAR ... AHMED QADOURY ABED 2/17/2025 4
ANIMATES AND GENDER FIVE kinds of nouns of personal nouns can be recognized: 1. MASCULINE GENDER can be replaced by HE or WHO 2. FEMININE GENDER can be replaced by SHE or WHO 3. DUAL GENDER where both masculine and feminine can be referred to :teacher 4. COMMON GENDER where both personal (masculine he or feminine she) and non-personal (it) nouns be treated :baby ,child 5. COLLECTIVE GENDER where collective nouns can be recognized as personal or non-personal on the one hand ,and singular or plural on the other: government ,family, CONTRASTIVE GRAMMAR ... AHMED QADOURY ABED 2/17/2025 5
GENDER OF NON-PERSONAL NOUNS NON-PERSONAL NOUNS are of FOUR kinds: 1. MASCILINE HIGHER ANIMALS :dog 2. FEMININE HIGHER ANIMALS : cow 3. HIGHER ORGANISMS these are referring to ships, countries, and other inanimate things which can be involved EMOTIONALLY. Ships are replaced by SHE, cars and trains by HE or SHE depending on the speaker s psychology. All can be replaced by IT or WHICH. 4. LOWER ANIMALS are replaced by IT or WHICH: fly ,snake CONTRASTIVE GRAMMAR ... AHMED QADOURY ABED 2/17/2025 6
The correspondence between gender and sex is almost complete. Therefore , gender in Arabic is GRAMMATICAL, not affected by GENDER IN ARABIC psychological factors For inanimate things FORMAL basis (whether the noun has certain morphological markers) can be traced. Masculine is the UNMARKED while feminine is MARKED. Three markers for feminine : SEMANTIC CONTENT HAS PRIORITY OVER FORM. (1)Personal nouns referring to males but with one of these three markers is called as in , which sometimes pluralized as feminine . (2) feminine nouns without these markers as in . CONTRASTIVE GRAMMAR ... AHMED QADOURY ABED 2014 2/17/2025 7 (3) some inanimates are treated as feminine as in . (4) some inanimates are both masculine or feminine as in
There is sometimes A CORRELATION BETWEEN GENDER AND NUMBER : feminine masculine Gender also involves ADJECTIVES WHICH AGREES WITH THE HEAD NOUN: / Gender affects verb selection : AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE SUBJECT AND ITS VERB. in this sentence a masculine verb is used for feminine subject because the subject is SEPARATED from its verb / which indicates a kind of CONTRASTIVE GRAMMAR ... AHMED QADOURY ABED 2/17/2025 8
MODERN ARABIC In modern Arabic irregular plurals of inanimates are treated as singular feminine for the sake of subject verb agreement: Occasionally , this is also true for : CONTRASTIVE GRAMMAR ... AHMED QADOURY ABED 2/17/2025 9
