[B-Greek] Gender

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Wed May 16 17:09:59 EDT 2007


Kevin Riley EGRAPSE
> 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.

KAI Don PROSQEIS EGRAPSE
> I would agree that confusing the two kinds of gender is a bad thing
> and needs to be dealt with, but throwing out gender altogether is
> like throwing the baby out with the bath water. Gender in language
> certainly is not random as a whole, and the persistence of agreement
> of natural gender with grammatical gender for many items is not
> coincidence. Otherwise we would find words like "man" and "woman"
> being of unpredictable gender across languages. Moreover, in many
> cases gender oddities are undoubtedly explicable, e.g. that of
> Madchen in German.
> As for noun class, it seemed to me that Randall
> was talking about what is traditionally called declension (please
> correct me if I misunderstood).

[RB]
Since you asked -- I was not talking about either declension or PTWSIS.
Kevin was correct, I was talking about gender as grammatical NOUN
CLASSES. Why? Because that is what "genders" are. A 'gender' is a
grammatical class of nouns that require grammatical agreement with a
particular class of adjectives, pronouns (and in some languages verbal
markers).
Yes, NOUN CLASSES (a.k.a. genders) cut across 'declensions', and yes,
such a term is preferrable because it is more flexible, applies to any
and every language, and avoids the inevitable, mis-directed energy for
students coming from single-NOUN CLASS languages like English where
they always want to know why Greek SARKS 'flesh' is feminine, Greek
KREAS 'meat' is neuter and Greek MAZOS 'breast' is masculine.

[DW]
> Gender cuts across declensions. And
> for those languages that have no genders or have more than three (I
> am unfamiliar with such languages),

Actually, you are writing in English which has one "gender", and
hence, the cateogry is not recognized, since it doesn't distinguish
anything. It becomes a 'zero' gender because it only has one.

> does the traditional structure
> need to be thrown out on the grounds that it does not accommodate them?

As for throwing things out, well, we don't throw out 'weight' just
because it is a function of 'mass' + 'gravity force'. 'Gender' is a
metaphorical name for a subset of "nounclasses" in languages that have
only two or three such classes. We use the generic classification
"noun class" in order to understand the specific instance of noun
classes that are called "gender".

Incidently I use the terms, or rather the Greek ones, when talking
about Greek nouns, because the Greeks  used them and the terms are
fitting metaphors. TA GENH:  ARSENIKON, QHLUKON, OUDETERON. It worked
for the Greeks and it works for everyone. In addition, I footnote the
linguistic description for students who want to know what these
grammatical entities are, since they are obviously not restricted to
physical sex. See note above. I seem to remember a witty, sexual, poem
or two in the Greek Anthology that plays with this side of the
language but I don't have time to peruse the 15 or so books to look
for an example. Many are by first century authors.
One symposion song (from a first century papyrus) that comes to mind
has a verse, with an ambiguous last line regarding 'gender':

 KRHNAS AUTORUTOUS MELITOS TREIS HQELON EXEIN
 Κρήνας αὐτορύτους μέλιτος τρεῖς ἤθελον ἔχειν,
I would like to have three fountains flowing with honey

 πέντε γαλακτορύτους, οἴνου δέκα, δώδεκα μύρου,
 PENTE GALAKTORUTOUS, OINOU DEKA, DWDEKA MUROU
five flowing with milk, ten with wine, twelve with myrrh,

 καὶ δύο πηγαίων ὑδάτων, καὶ τρείς χιονέων·
 KAI DUO PHGAIWN UDATWN KAI TREIS XIONEWN
and two springs of water and three of melted snows

 παῖδα κατὰ κρήνην καὶ παρθένον ἤθελον ἔχειν.
 PAIDA KATA KRHNHN KAI PARQENON HQELON EXEIN
a boy by each fountain and a girl I would like to have.

chorus:       αὔλει μοι.
                 AULEI MOI
                 play a flute for me

The last line of the verse, of course, is ambiguous. A PAIS 'child,
slave' could be either O or H, a boy or a girl, and a PARQENON
'virgin' could also be O or H, a boy or a girl. However, knowing the
Greek culture, it is likely that PAIS (aitiatike: PAIDA) refers to a
pre-pubescent boy, and PARQENOS, a teenage girl. From a Jewish
perspective the culture was sick.

This is why the Passover tractate in the Mishna tells people not to do
EPI KWMON 'go to a wild Greek party' after celebrating PESAH.

And what is this song doing here? In our sxolé this summer the Greek
students will be visiting Tsipori near Nazareth, where there is an
ancient house with a banquet/symposion room with beautiful mosaics all
around, and a bit of Greek, depicting themes of DIONYSIOS, including a
defeat of HRAKLHS in wine drinking. We will read the six extant verses
of the symposion song as a window into the first century language. It
is quite educational to read texts that fit sites, like the '1st
century death of Pan' at the Paneion (Caesarea Philippi), or the first
century imperial grave-robbing prohibition at Bet Shearim, not to
mention appropriate NT texts.

ERRWSQE
Randall

-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη
שלום לכם וברכות
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
randallbuth at gmail.com


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