[B-Greek] Gender

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Fri May 18 09:46:55 EDT 2007


I'm getting the sense that this exchange is becoming tedious and that stances beingtaken toward gender involve deep-seated philosophical differences, perhaps even theological differences -- but, whatever their  nature, it doesn't seem likely that prolonging thisdiscussion is going to bring much more light on the subject.

Carl W. Conrad, Co-Chair, B-Greek


 
On Friday, May 18, 2007, at 09:26AM, <frjsilver at optonline.net> wrote:
>Dear Friends --
>
>It seems we're back to my original description of grammatical gender as being four-fold:  masculine, feminine, both, neither.
>
>When biological sex (male or female) -- as distinct from grammatical gender -- overlaps grammatical gender, as when 'mother' (female) is referenced by 'she' (feminine), we have an example of natural gender as a subset of grammatical gender, ne c'est pas?
>
>But in Chinese and Turkish, e.g., the third-person singular pronoun serves as an undifferentiated referent for both male and female creatures (including human beings) as well as for inanimate objects.  In such languages, concepts of 'gender' which we native speakers of one or another form of Modern English (or Greek, for that matter) instinctively seek must be gleaned from context (syntax) rather than grammar.  
>
>The same is true in English with regard to number, especially with 'who', 'you' and a few other pronominal referents.  I've long suspected that such words retain their possessive and objective case-specific inflections even now, along with (in some cases) rather differently formed plurals, while the rest of English's nouns retain only vestigial case markers such as possessive _'s_ and plural _s_.  Mostly.  Greek isn't the only language with exceptions to nearly every perceived 'rule' of construction!
>
>Peace and blessings to all.
>
>Father James (who's gradually catching up with his correspondence)
>
>Monk James Silver
>Orthodox Church in America
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Randall Buth 
>Date: Friday, May 18, 2007 7:04 am
>Subject: [B-Greek] Gender
>To: B-Greek 
>
>> > (DW) I did ask, and thanks for the clarification. However, you 
>> appear> to be begging the question when you say "Because that is what
>> > 'genders' are" and then present a rather nondescript 
>> explanation as a
>> > standard definition. Also, I think your argument is a generalization
>> > of the particular, evidently to deal with gender oddities. It seems
>> > to solve nothing. You have simply acknowledged the oddities as
>> > inexplicable, and have attempted to generalize the terminology to
>> > account for that.
>> 
>> Exactly. It appears that we might be in agreement.
>> 'Noun classes' are a generalization from a particular.
>> It deals with gender oddities. Howwever, while it does not 
>> explain why
>> 'table' in Greek and Spanish is put in the same class as females,
>> while 'table' in Hebrew is put in the same class with males, [or Gr.
>> QALASSA female with Hb. YAM 'male', or Gr. HLIOS male with Hb. SHEMESH
>> f. etc etc etc], it does accomodate the randomness both within and
>> across languages. It also explains and accomodates why everything
>> asexual isn't lumped into 'neuter' in a three-nounclass system.
>> So, yes, this acknowledges the oddities as inexplicable.
>> 
>> One note needs to be added: oddities in English sounds marginal,
>> something left-over that doesn't fit, while in fact, the inexplicables
>> and the randomness are the MAJORITY of the items. By far, the majority
>> of nouns in any 2-nounclass or 3-nounclass language do not have
>> inherent sex but are put into these grammatical classes in ways that
>> are unpredictable to any one language or language family. To be sure,
>> the random choices do tell us something, not too clear at all, about
>> how the choices might have been made, if we were on scene. Perhaps
>> 'table' in Greek was associated to food and life and life with females
>> and 'voila' table is in the class with females. Or maybe someone in
>> the distant past, tripped, said PEZA for 'footstand' instead of PODS
>> 'm. foot', thought it sounded nice with the 'A' at the end, which
>> stuck with others. Or just wanted a PEZA to be different from 
>> POUS m.
>> Then followed up with (te)TRAPEZA and TR(I)APEZA (?). Meanwhile, in
>> Canaan some people were buying a fine SHULHAN from some traders and
>> called it masculine because it was a new thing and 'davar 
>> Hadash' "new
>> thing" was masculine. And the first SHULHANOT m. (note the plural
>> formation!) were likely of `ETs 'wood m.' not EVEN 'stone f.!' Of
>> course, this is pure speculation, irrelevant, etc. The facts are
>> simply that Greek has tens of thousands of common nouns whose reasons
>> for categorization can only be guessed at. Ditto Hebrew. And Yes,
>> analogy worked within the systems so that somethings might snow-ball
>> and attract words into one class or another. Word shape, sound,
>> analogy, borrowings, unrecoverable unique events, etc., all played
>> their part in the coalescing of nouns into their various noun classes.
>> Once the -SIS nouns were put in the category with females, then other
>> -SIS nouns (ANAGNWSIS 'reading') were funneled that way, so that when
>> encountering a new -SIS word a learner knows which category it belongs
>> to. But the basic choice to make -SIS words and to group them in the
>> female class, that was fundamentally random, and not inherent to the
>> semantics. Linguists want a name that reflects that semantic
>> randomness when comparing languages across language families.
>> Linguists are also happy with calling things gender within a language
>> that has 2 or 3 grammatical noun classes. From that perspective gender
>> is a specific kind of grammatical nounclass.
>> 
>> ...
>> >I also appreciate your effort in trying to deal with the
>> > problems of gender, even if I can't agree with your approach. 
>> So I
>> > beg to agree to disagree.
>> 
>> This isn't clear. I am having trouble understanding what there 
>> is to
>> disagree with?
>> 
>> Are we agreed that the majority of Greek nouns do not have inherent
>> sexuality, but acquire it, as it were, by being placed in a specific
>> noun class?
>> 
>> blessings
>> Randall
>> 
>> -- 
>> Randall Buth, PhD
>> www.biblicalulpan.org
>> ????? ???? ??? ?????? ??????????
>> ???? ??? ??????
>> ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
>> randallbuth at gmail.com
>> ---
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>> 
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