Gender in conlangs

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Dormouse559
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Dormouse559 »

Xing wrote:To be fair, there have probably been "borderline cases" - people who don't identify easily as either males of females even in pre-modern times. However, the vast majority of humans can be identified as male or female, and it's a relatively constant trait, so I can understand that it's handy to have natural gender/sex as a basis for a grammatical gender system.
Yeah, I'm just saying the idea of "transsexual" is very much a product of our time. That's especially true if you take the meaning of "someone who has undergone sex-reassignment surgery and/or hormone replacement".
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by felipesnark »

Shonkasika has six grammatical genders:

common (animate)
masculine (animate)
feminine (animate)
neuter (inanimate)
celestial (inanimate)
terrestrial (inanimate)

Gender is predictable on nouns by endings (barring rare exceptions) and adjectives and determiners agree with nouns in gender, number and case. Words referring directly to humans are normally semantically placed in the corresponding animate gender. There is some semantic basis for the gender of nouns but plenty of the gender assignment of a noun is just based on its morphology.
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Thrice Xandvii
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

Does it count as a counterpoint that I have a Romlang that dispenses with gendered noun classes? (Granted it isn't meant to be an especially naturalistic one since it artificially acquired a Cherokee-like phonology.)

Also, Project Gravel may end up with some kind of gender system, likely animate/inanimate since I am not a fan of masculine/feminine noun class systems.

Further, Shituul does have a sort of vestigal noun class system which breaks things down by rather abstract lines as to whether it is solid, fluid or "æthid" which means essentially "celestial things." Although in Shituul the only place this really shows up is the pronouns which must agree with the gender of the noun they replace or with the singulative particle which also must agree with the noun to which it refers. There also is a hint of a sex-based system since most biologically female things are "fluid" and most male things are "solid" but those aren't universally true. For instance people's names are almost never taken from the fluid gender because it is seen as bad luck, so girls tend to be named for æthid things instead.
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Salmoneus »

Xing wrote: To be fair, there have probably been "borderline cases" - people who don't identify easily as either males of females even in pre-modern times.
I'm not sure that there have been, no. I think the concept of "identification" in this sense is largely a very modern invention. Historically, your "identity" would not have been a matter of you gazing deeply into your unique and unchanging soul to divine the truth of your nature therein... it would have been a matter of what social role you played. In most societies, the sex roles were primarily "has vagina to have babies through" and "inserts penis into things", so there wasn't a great deal of room for ambiguity.

[However, some societies defined the roles differently. So Egyptian pharaohs, for example, were (at least early on) definitionally men and people who became pharaoh would be defined as men. In some societies, warriors are men, so anyone who is a warrior is a man. In others, husbands are men, so anyone married to a woman is a man. And some societies put 'can have babies' ahead of 'has vagina', so that barren women are men. Etc.]

Of course, alongside the primary definitions there are also concomitant expectations, and there have always been people who have played with those expectations: men who dress as women, for instance. But I strongly suspect that in the overwhelming majority of cases these people would not have "identified" as "women" (or "half man half woman") - since they would clearly have been delusional in doing so by the definitions of the day! - but rather they would have considered themselves to "enjoy acting as a woman". The idea that dressing up as a woman makes them somehow have a partially-female identity would probably have been regarded in a similar way to the idea that dressing up as a princess made someone partially-royal.

[Some societies have, of course, had a third gender. But even those are socially-defined - nobody is only half third-gender, they either are or they aren't...]
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Prinsessa »

Aleks wrote:Anyways on topic I felt genders didn't fit well in mine because what do you do with transexual people? Not knowing what to refer to them as, why not just use animate and inanimate genders? I feel this makes it better for conversing with people and makes it logical. The only thing I can think of that messes with this is AI and androids. With mine I have animate, inanimate, animate plural, and inanimate plural.
Uh, what? Trans women would be referred to using the feminine just like cis women and vice versa for trans and cis men — unless of course your consociety is made up of transphobic bigots, but then that's an issue with the people and not with the language.

The only potential "issue" would be non-binary/agender/whatever people, but not trans people in general (such people wouldn't necessarily even be trans, I suppose), and in the case of those people they'd probably lobby for something themselves (like a new pronoun) unless of course the language already lacks gendered pronouns, making it a little less problematic, so that would depend on your conworlding.

And if your language isn't connected to a conworld, then there is no problem at all because you don't have to limit yourself to the transphobic notions of your conpeople.

But if you're saying it's for an advanced/futuristic setting for humans, then they would probably be rather decent people about this stuff. There's been immense progress lately even today.

Bottom line is, the issue is never with the language, but with the people who speak it. It doesn't matter if you speak Spanish with a masculine-feminine binary distinction or Finnish without even gendered pronouns — what matters is how people respect each other and use their language to show this respect.
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Thrice Xandvii
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

@Salmoneus: What of the Native American idea of "twin souls" (I think that's the term I am looking for) where they believe that they filled a middle ground between the sexes. Also isn't there some level of a "third gender" in some Indian and East Asian cultures?

I am by no means an expert nor have I done much research on the topic, but I feel like there has been a level of gender ambiguity and some variety of trans-folks throughout not just the modern era.
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Prinsessa »

I'm sure there's a historical section on the Wikipedia article on transsexualism. Hijras come to mind.
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Salmoneus »

I already mentioned third genders. I'll repeat: my understanding is that these are still regarded as a) discrete categories, and b) socially-defined. Of course, it's possible that there have been one or two societies where one or both of these has not been the case? But that's my general understanding. Third genders would not typically have involved any gender-ambiguity, and almost by definition they would not have involved transsexualism (they're a way to avoid accepting the possibility of transexualism by permitting a third, but equally fixed, sex).

[also: third gender societies have only ever been a minority of societies]
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Odkidstr »

I use gender a lot. Actually, I strongly dislike gender in the pronoun system a lot of the time, but I do use gender a lot in my conlangs.

Odki
Spoiler:
Odki has 7 genders. Human, Animal, Plant, Inanimate/Other, Masculine, Feminine, & Neuter.

The gender system is split in two: Group A (Masculine, Feminine, Neuter) & Group B (Human, Animal, Plant, Inanimate/Other).

Neuter is implied on a noun and there is no way to mark it. Not sure if that disqualifies it as an "actual" gender, but nouns are considered to be neuter with a few exceptions (e.g. man vs woman). Group A gender is indicated through prefixes; however, it isn't mandatory in modern Odki (but it used to be in Old Odki). It's mostly used for artistic reasons (e.g. poetry), and often in the case of nouns that are inherently gendered, it will have become part of the root of the word (so man is igogde vs woman is edogde, though this isn't the perfect example as person is ogde). Group A is also found, of all places, in the first person pronoun system. First person pronouns must have Masculine or Feminine gender, including plurals; however, the rules are a lot looser with plurals, and represent the speaker's best estimation of the majority gender in the group being referred to. There is no neuter first person. Second & Third Person are Neuter always.

Group B is merged with the case system. For the most part, Human, Animal, & Plant are pretty obvious and correspond well to our culture. Anything not covered there falls under Inanimate/Other, which is typically unmarked in the Nominative. There are some unexpected gender choices for some words; juice, for instance, takes the plant gender. Body parts can take Human or Inanimate gender, depending on whether it is someone's body part or if being discussed in general (so arm has two different genders in "my arm" vs "an arm and a leg"). Inanimate is also applied to body parts if talking about someone who is dead, such as a corpse.

The case system along with Group B gender are all suffixes. Group B gender can be separated from the case system and often is. Adjectives take only the gender of the noun and are always marked for gender; this distinguishes them from adverbs which are basically considered the same to speakers of Odki. Verbs don't take any gender, though, so Adverbs never take gender, unlike Adjectives which will always have gender. If Group A gender is being used on a noun, it is supposed to be used on Adjectives as well; in speech, this will often be forgotten, but in works of art and such it is almost always observed.
Igogu

I eliminated the concept of gender, more or less, from this language. For instance, I don't even have a word for man vs woman, only person. The assumption here is that people can tell by context. There are adjectives for masculine/feminine, and if something is unclear, then they would be used to clear it up. The only words that I can recall that have gender are Male/Female (in the scientific sense) & Father/Mother (to indicate biological lineage, not social role).

Uncompleted Language

This language is, more or less, just a sort of joke conlang. It has 5 genders that I added because I could. Masculine, Feminine, Androgynous, Masculine-Female, Feminine-Male.
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Dormouse559 »

Here's an animacy-based gender system I've had bouncing around in my head for a while. It's my first attempt at gender in an a priori conlang, so I'm not sure how naturalistic it is. What do you think?

I – adult humans, supernatural entities, heavenly bodies, lightning
II – children, large animals, fire, storms, rivers, most body parts
III – small animals, wind, dead bodies, weapons, genitalia
IV – plants, abiotic objects, bones, hair, finger-/toenails, skin
V – abstract concepts
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by cntrational »

The Objectively Great Animacy system:

I - fast food and gourmet food
II - other food
III - soylent green
IIII - animals that have yet to be cooked
IIIII - plants that have yet to be cooked
IIIIII - vegan food
IIIIIII - humans
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Dormouse559 »

Considering soylent green is people, shouldn't it be closer to IIIIIII?
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by cntrational »

that's equivalent to "uncooked"
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Sights »

So, if I may ask a quick question here instead of in the "Quick question" thread, how naturalistic is it to have gender differences in number marking or in some kind of verb agreement but not have gender distinctions in pronouns? Because, in an animate vs. inanimate gender system, having a pronoun for both "he" and "she" but a different one for "it" doesn't strike me as a particularly useful distinction.
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Dormouse559 »

By allowing separate pronouns for "he" and "she", you're introducing sex-based gender. "It" as a separate pronoun is evidence of animacy-based gender.

EDIT: I'm sorry, scratch that. I misunderstood you. I can't comment on the likelihood of your scenario, but isn't marking gender on the verb (for example) accomplishing exactly the same thing as marking it on a pronoun? The only difference I see is the precise location of gender marking.
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by clawgrip »

Yeah, it's pretty much a question of how much redundancy you want your language to have.
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Ahzoh »

clawgrip wrote:Yeah, it's pretty much a question of how much redundancy you want your language to have.
I want lots, but I also use lack of gender distinction to indicate the construct state of noun.
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Sights »

Dormouse559 wrote:By allowing separate pronouns for "he" and "she", you're introducing sex-based gender. "It" as a separate pronoun is evidence of animacy-based gender. EDIT: I'm sorry, scratch that. I misunderstood you. I can't comment on the likelihood of your scenario, but isn't marking gender on the verb (for example) accomplishing exactly the same thing as marking it on a pronoun? The only difference I see is the precise location of gender marking.
clawgrip wrote:Yeah, it's pretty much a question of how much redundancy you want your language to have.
To be honest my phrasing was kind of terrible [:S]

Basically, after reading this thread, what little gender my conlang has seems a bit contrived in that it only shows up in number markers and in demonstratives. A gender system most likely spans other parts of grammar too, like pronouns, adjectives, etc. And I just wanted to know what a naturalistic animate vs. inanimate systems looks like, ideally. [:)]
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by clawgrip »

It's not necessarily unrealistic. Your language could be at the stage where gender has almost disappeared, and there are only a few traces left.

I have a language that has a two-tiered gender system (rational genders: masc/fem, irrational genders: tangible/intangible), but the subclasses have disappeared or half-disappeared in the plural. I consider it to be in the early stages of losing the subclass gender, but the superclass gender (rational/irrational) is quite strong.

So I don't think your system is necessarily strange.
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Re: Grammatical Gender

Post by Ranquil »

I'm honestly surprised no one's mentioned Swedish, Norwegian and Danish yet.

All of these have two genders: "en" and "et(t)". Basically, en is human and et is not human. However, the vast majority of the time this doesn't apply. It's more like most words that mean humans are en words but there are also human words that are et words. Likewise, many non-animate things are en words. So when you start learning any of these languages, you don't even need to know en and et are human and non-human.
However, the properties of these genders come up with some pronouns.

For example, in Swedish "någon/någott/några" all mean "some".
någon hund = some dog (en)
någott äpple = some apple (ett)
några pengar = some money (lit. some moneys)
However, they have different meanings when they're on their own, based entirely on their gender.
någon = someone
någott = something
några = some (people or anything else in plural)

The same thing applies to "ingen/ingett/inga", which means no [insert noun here], no one or nothing.


Do correct me if I'm wrong though. :D
Last edited by Ranquil on 30 Sep 2015 22:29, edited 1 time in total.
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