Indeed, French being my first language, I would have to agree that "such
categorization would not map on to the grammatical gender (in languages
that have gender)" (in refering to your posting). Thinking of your
example of butterfly, in French, it is masculine (papillon). A car
(voiture) is feminine, and a mountain (montagne) is feminine. This is a
very limited sample, but we could come up with many more that are not
what one might expect if we follow your example below.
And in other languages, sometimes the words are of the opposite gender.
Really interesting question to ask where the gender of words comes from...
Cheers!
Jean-Marc
Marie Helweg-Larsen wrote:
Hi Karl
All good questions. Yes the best solution would just be to give the
words to people and have them categorizing the words as feminine,
masculine or neutral/neither. However, I'm too short on time to
collect that data myself so I thought that some cognitive psychologist
might already have made such a list.
Of course there is no "correct" answer to such categorization - just
people's gut reactions based on gender schemas (masculine nouns in our
culture are perhaps those that are associated with outside, active,
aggressive or gross things). I would guess that such categorization
would not map on to the grammatical gender (in languages that have
gender).
Marie
Karl L. Wuensch wrote:
Interesting, where do you intend to go with this? Why not just ask
people to categorize words for you and then see if you can make any
sense out of it.
If a butterfly is feminine, I wonder what gender a caterpillar is?
Is there a sexual metamorphosis?
The gender that words have in other languages may not help you much.
Have you any idea how words have come to have genders in many
languages -- I don't. Consider the following:
German "Fraulein" -- a single woman, gender = neuter.
Latin "virilitas" -- manhood or virility, gender = feminine.
Any linguists out there than explain such silliness to a down-home
boy who hasn't a clue?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl L. Wuensch, Department of Psychology,
East Carolina University, Greenville NC 27858-4353
Voice: 252-328-4102 Fax: 252-328-6283
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://core.ecu.edu/psyc/wuenschk/klw.htm
----- Original Message ----- From: "Marie Helweg-Larsen"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Teaching in the Psychological Sciences" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2005 4:25 PM
Subject: Masculine/feminine words?
Hi all
I'm looking for a categorization scheme for determining if words (not
traits) are feminine or masculine. For example, you might think of
"butterfly" as feminine and "slug" as masculine but I need some sort of
categorizing scheme for putting nouns into either feminine, masculine or
neutral categories.
All the research I've found so far (google and psychinfo plus various
gender texts) seem to focus on traits (lots of references to Bem) not
nouns but that must be done by someone?!
Marie
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