Gender Shifts in the History of English

Gender Shifts in the History of English PDF Author: Anne Curzan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139436686
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
How and why did grammatical gender, found in Old English and in other Germanic languages, gradually disappear from English and get replaced by a system where the gender of nouns and the use of personal pronouns depend on the natural gender of the referent? How is this shift related to 'irregular agreement' (such as she for ships) and 'sexist' language use (such as generic he) in Modern English, and how is the language continuing to evolve in these respects? Anne Curzan's accessibly written and carefully researched study is based on extensive corpus data, and will make a major contribution by providing a historical perspective on these often controversial questions. It will be of interest to researchers and students in history of English, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, language and gender, and medieval studies.

Gender Shifts in the History of English

Gender Shifts in the History of English PDF Author: Anne Curzan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139436686
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
How and why did grammatical gender, found in Old English and in other Germanic languages, gradually disappear from English and get replaced by a system where the gender of nouns and the use of personal pronouns depend on the natural gender of the referent? How is this shift related to 'irregular agreement' (such as she for ships) and 'sexist' language use (such as generic he) in Modern English, and how is the language continuing to evolve in these respects? Anne Curzan's accessibly written and carefully researched study is based on extensive corpus data, and will make a major contribution by providing a historical perspective on these often controversial questions. It will be of interest to researchers and students in history of English, historical linguistics, corpus linguistics, language and gender, and medieval studies.

The loss of grammatical gender in the history of english

The loss of grammatical gender in the history of english PDF Author: Snejana Iovtcheva
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3638876225
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 14

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: A, Syracuse University (USA) (USA: Syracuse University), language: English, abstract: This paper analyzes the question of how and why grammatical gender got lost in English. In order to do so, it reviews the recent literature on gender shifts in Old English and Middle English. The paper identifies several theoretical explanations based on both diachronic studies of English and general theoretical studies of gender. More concretely, the paper discusses the work of Greville Corbett (1991) on gender, Anne Curzan’s (2003) analysis on gender shifts in the history of English, and Charles Jones’s (1988) assumption of a possible paradigm shift in Old English. At the same time, older studies are given as an example for why certain premises did not work in the past. The paper first coments the relationship of English within the language families, provides a linguistic definition of grammatical gender, and describes major properties of the Modern English gender systems as well as those of the Old English gender system. It looks at the morphological and syntactic changes that triggered a shift in the English gender system. It is argued that not only external changes but also an underlying paradigm shift induced the demise of grammatical gender in Old English. In addition, the role of the personal pronouns is analyzed. According to Curzan (2003) and Corbett (1991) the role of the personal pronouns may prove to be the key in explaining the shift in the gender system.

Teaching the History of the English Language

Teaching the History of the English Language PDF Author: Colette Moore
Publisher: Modern Language Association of America
ISBN: 9781603293846
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The study of the history of the English language (HEL) encompasses a broad sweep of time and space, reaching back to the fifth century and around the globe. Further, the language has always varied from place to place and continues to evolve today. Instructors face the challenges of teaching this vast subject in one semester and of engaging students with unfamiliar material and techniques. This volume guides instructors in designing an HEL course suited to their own interests and institutions.The essays consider what subjects of HEL to include, how to organize the course, and what textbook to assign. They offer historical approaches and those that are not structured by chronology. Sample assignments provide opportunities for students to conduct original research, work with archives and digital resources, and investigate language in their communities. The essays also help students question notions of linguistic correctness.

Gender and the Politics of History

Gender and the Politics of History PDF Author: Joan Wallach Scott
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231118576
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
An interrogation of the uses of gender as a tool for cultural and historical analysis. The revised edition reassesses the book's fundamental topic: the category of gender. In arguing that gender no longer serves to destabilize our understanding of sexual difference, the new preface and new chapter open a critical dialogue with the original book. From publisher description.

Gender and Ideology in Translation

Gender and Ideology in Translation PDF Author: Vanessa Leonardi
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039111527
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Leonardi analyses and evaluates the problems that may arise from ideology-driven shifts in the translation process as a result of gender differences. First she offers a theoretical background, draws up an analytic checklist of linguistic tools and states the main hypothesis, then she tests the hypothesis with four empirical analyses.

How Sex Changed

How Sex Changed PDF Author: Joanne Meyerowitz
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674040961
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Book Description
How Sex Changed is a fascinating social, cultural, and medical history of transsexuality in the United States. Joanne Meyerowitz tells a powerful human story about people who had a deep and unshakable desire to transform their bodily sex. In the last century when many challenged the social categories and hierarchies of race, class, and gender, transsexuals questioned biological sex itself, the category that seemed most fundamental and fixed of all. From early twentieth-century sex experiments in Europe, to the saga of Christine Jorgensen, whose sex-change surgery made headlines in 1952, to today’s growing transgender movement, Meyerowitz gives us the first serious history of transsexuality. She focuses on the stories of transsexual men and women themselves, as well as a large supporting cast of doctors, scientists, journalists, lawyers, judges, feminists, and gay liberationists, as they debated the big questions of medical ethics, nature versus nurture, self and society, and the scope of human rights. In this story of transsexuality, Meyerowitz shows how new definitions of sex circulated in popular culture, science, medicine, and the law, and she elucidates the tidal shifts in our social, moral, and medical beliefs over the twentieth century, away from sex as an evident biological certainty and toward an understanding of sex as something malleable and complex. How Sex Changed is an intimate history that illuminates the very changes that shape our understanding of sex, gender, and sexuality today.

What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She

What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She PDF Author: Dennis Baron
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631496050
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
“If you want to know why more people are asking ‘what’s your pronoun?’ then you (singular or plural) should read this book.” —Joe Moran, New York Times Book Review Heralded as “required reading” (Geoff Nunberg) and “the book” (Anne Fadiman) for anyone interested in the conversation swirling around gender-neutral and nonbinary pronouns, What’s Your Pronoun? is a classic in the making. Providing much-needed historical context and analysis to the debate around what we call ourselves, Dennis Baron brings new insight to a centuries-old topic and illuminates how—and why—these pronouns are sparking confusion and prompting new policies in schools, workplaces, and even statehouses. Enlightening and affirming, What’s Your Pronoun? introduces a new way of thinking about language, gender, and how they intersect.

Pronominal Gender in English

Pronominal Gender in English PDF Author: Peter Siemund
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780415543071
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This book investigates the use of English third person pronouns (he, she, it) across different varieties of English, where we frequently find he and she used for inanimate objects (the tree – he, the house – he, the bucket – he, but the water – it). It is the first book-length study of this subject. Varieties of English are discussed in the context of Germanic and Romance languages and dialects as well as a small sample of additional languages. The analysis is conducted within the framework set out by functional typology. The book's straightforward and illuminating generalization in terms of the well known hierarchy of individuation provides a systematic link between pronominal usage in Standard English and its varieties.

History of English

History of English PDF Author: Dan McIntyre
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100029840X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Routledge English Language Introductions cover core areas of language study and are one-stop resources for students. Assuming no prior knowledge, books in the series offer an accessible overview of the subject, with activities, study questions, sample analyses, commentaries and key readings – all in the same volume. The innovative and flexible ‘two-dimensional’ structure is built around four sections – introduction, development, exploration and extension – which offer self-contained stages for study. Each topic can also be read across these sections, enabling the reader to build gradually on the knowledge gained. This revised second edition of History of English includes: ❑ a comprehensive introduction to the history of English covering the origins of English, the change from Old to Middle English, and the influence of other languages on English; ❑ increased coverage of key issues, such as the standardisation of English; ❑ a wider range of activities, plus answers to exercises; ❑ new readings of well-known authors such as Manfred Krug, Colette Moore, Merja Stenroos and David Crystal; ❑ a timeline of important external events in the history of English. Structured to reflect the chronological development of the English language, History of English describes and explains the changes in the language over a span of 1,500 years, covering all aspects from phonology and grammar, to register and discourse. In doing so, it incorporates examples from a wide variety of texts and provides an interactive and structured textbook that will be essential reading for all students of English language and linguistics.

Gender and Noun Classification

Gender and Noun Classification PDF Author: Eric Mathieu
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198828101
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
This volume explores the many ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into genders or classes. The findings in the volume have significant implications for syntactic theory and theories of interpretation, and contribute to a greater understanding of the interplay between inflection and derivation.