[B-Greek] Gender
Kevin Riley
klriley at alphalink.com.au
Wed May 16 01:44:33 EDT 2007
Someone has already mentioned that grammatical gender is primarily about
noun class, not natural gender. Some languages have no gender, some have
multiple 'genders' - in which case they are usually not referred to as
genders'. I think we could save a lot of confusion if we referred to a
noun class" rather than a 'gender' when teaching as it is inevitable that
people from a background with a language that has no grammatical gender will
confuse grammatical gender with natural gender.
Kevin Riley
-------Original Message-------
From: frjsilver at optonline.net
Date: 16/05/2007 10:15:49 AM
Dear Friends --
I'm SO behind in my correspondence, I can't believe I'm making time for this
response. Of course, Mr Flora will have his own take on this, but --
personally -- I'm not satisfied with the replies posted so far. So let me
attempt an answer.
Most importantly -- and please forgive me if I'm 'preaching to the choir' --
GENDER is a purely grammatical concept. It has four possibilities: masculine
feminine, both, neither (neuter). But there are only two sexes: male and
female.
So, e.g., IN ENGLISH 'stallion' is masculine, 'mare' is feminine, ''horse'
is both, 'barn' is neither.
This is because English, like some other languages, has only NATURAL gender:
people and animals of the biologically male sex are of grammatically
masculine gender and take appropriate referents, and the same is true for
the females of all species. Every THING which is of neither the male or
female SEX is grammatically neither (neuter). Words referring to animate
creatures, human and animal, without sex-specific characteristics ('horses',
'people', 'they') are grammatically 'both'. Please remember: this is merely
grammar, and merely in English, although some other languages also function
this way.
Greek, on the other hand, has BOTH natural and grammatical gender, sometimes
in spite of what we native speakers of English would perceive as a
contradiction or inconsistency between natural and grammatical genders.
Many words describing THINGS have a grammatical, rather than a natural,
gender in Greek which is simply not a functional concept in English: hH
TRAPEZA, HO LOGOS, TO KRIMA -- all of which require grammatically
appropriate adjectives and pronouns as referents.
Then, as in English, there are Greek's natural-gender words: HO PATER, hH
MHTHR, TO KRIMA.
But what do we do with TO PAIS? I've noticed that even in English we
sometimes refer to a child or a baby as 'it', especially when very young,
but I squirm at this. Greek doesn't.
Most of the time, it's understood that PARTHENOS refers to a woman in spite
of its second-declension masculine FORM, but it's entirely possible to
say/write HO PARTHENOS, describing a virgin male. The same is true of other
words in Greek, although it's much more unusual to have first-declension (or
otherwise) formally feminine words to be understood as masculine.
The rules of grammatical gender require that masculine, feminine, and neuter
FORM nouns take masculine, feminine, and neuter referents accordingly --
unless they're used like HO PARTHENOS. Words such as hH hODOS will always
require femine referents.
All of this is just as true in Modern Greek as in older usages. I hope this
helps a little.
Peace and blessings to all.
CRISTOS ANESTH! ALHQWS HO KURIOS ANESTH!
Father James
Monk James Silver
Orthodox Church in America
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list