English, gender and God

Firsly, let's clarify some issues of etymology. Rhrain wrote The etymology of the word he is that it originally was a neuter construction. I'm not sure where Rh gets this from. The OED pretty clearly says, The simplest form of the (orig. demonstr.) base hi-, ... was cogn. with OFris. hi, he (fem. hiu, neut. hit). In other words, all the dictionary has to say about the gender of root forms of the pronoun is that it was cognate with a masculine form of Old Frisian.My contention is that Old English had a default masculine gender - which is the reason he was used of things not sexually distinguished and the reason he was the root for third-person pronouns. The data supporting the default masculine gender is well described in Rice and Steinmetz The Evolution of Gender in English, Tromso, 2000. In essence, the argument is that words which fall outwith discernable rules for forming gender are treated as masculine.

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Take, for example, a common claim amongst some that the word history is actually a contraction of the words his and story. They claim that this is somehow part of the reason that the field of history, especially as taught in many schools, is so filled with the deed of men and not of women. But there's a problem: It isn't true.

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I think the problem may be that this claim is not true. The gender historians I know have not claimed that history is etymologically biased, but that the presence of his gives the impression of bias in usage and subtly influences the practice of history. I would be really interested if you had a suitably early source which makes an etymological rather than a psycholinguistic case for moving to a new usage. If you have one you should send in a readers slip to the Oxford, as they are pretty clear (in the 1993 additions to the second edition) that the new usage is a fanciful pun and not based on a claim that history is actually a contraction.I am puzzled by Rhrain's statement ...

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The language has no sexist connotation. The usage, on the other hand, can easily have one. The language uses a single word for both masculine and neuter objects. That doesn't mean the language in and of itself has any confusion over the two. That can come only from usage.

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The clear implication here is that there is a distinction between the language and the usage. I cannot see how this distinction can be reliably or made, or by what authority one could make it.

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So why is it only the people who feel that it is sexist who get to have their opinions count? Why don't the people who feel that it isn't sexist get to have an equal claim to the language?

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All have an equal claim, and etymology doesn't help to resolve it because it is usage, not etymology that counts.In contemporary English, the pronouns he and she sound egregious when used as gender-neutral terms. My grandmother's usage of she for all cats and he for all dogs sounds distinctly wrong to contemporary ears: he has just given birth or she is a lovely tomcat don't work, but were phrases she and her generation used naturally and comfortably. Nor was this purely a dialect - the usage can be found in Jane Austen, for example.The claim that he can be used of God without implication of gender just doesn't wash. It would, perhaps, be tenable if there were comparatively common contemporary usages of beings referred to in a gender neutral manner. I am not aware of any.

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... you have to look at the people on either side of the message: The sender and the receiver. It is quite possible that the receiver heard something that the sender didn't mean. And that is not the fault of the language.

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And this is the answer to your question about why one side rather than the other modifies its language - the sender typically modifies their terms in order to clarify their meaning. This is what we do when speaking to children and foreigners - a phenomenon known as motherspeak. The history of language is the history of senders evolving language. Where there is disagreement, the onus is ever on the sender to disambiguate terms. Much though I think a loss to the language - I cannot, on this beautiful May morning, describe myself as "feeling gay" to my colleagues without them drawing conclusions I would not wish them to draw.NB - the Oxford does record a written form which could get round this problem for texts. S/he is defined as written representation of ‘he or she’, used as nom. sing. third person pron. to include both genders.[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 05-05-2003][This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 05-06-2003]

This second post is intended to clear up two picky issues from Rhrain's reply to my reply ...I really don't grok the point you are trying to make about forms in Old English being "all over the place" - what exactly is it you are trying to say about Old English pronouns? When you say "the crossing of words is all over the place, crossing case as well as gender" are you suggesting there was some sort of confusion of forms? If not, what is it you are suggesting?

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You're right that "heo" is nominative feminine form and that "hie" and "hi" are plural...but they are also feminine singular.

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I am aware that the Oxford gives hie and hi as feminine nominative singular forms. The problem lies, as with any discussion of inflections, in trying to tease out the underlying regular forms from the tangle of written versions. For example, what do we mean when we say that tid is feminine in Old English? What are we to make of seemingly masculine usages such as aet ilcum tide on the Kirkdale sundial? Does this show a variable gender, a local usage, a mistake or a gender shift? Perhaps any of these, but the concensus remains that tid in its most common usage was feminine. In the same way, the common usage for expressing the nominative feminine singular pronoun is heo or occasionally hio. That the Oxford lists the rare alternatives is testament to its thoroughness, but not very helpful in drawing conclusions as to the regular forms of Old English pronouns.[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 05-05-2003]

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How about the word 'woman',
woman comes from the old saxon for 'wife-man'

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But man meant human - irrespective of gender. The word for a female adult hom. sap. was wif.The word for a male adult hom. sap. was wer - as in werewolf. Now that's sexist! What do you call a woman who turns into a wolf - a "wifwolf", I suppose.

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"In English, the typical form in all ages has been he, from which emphasis probably produced heo, hye, hee, and tonelessness ha, a, which last long prevailed in representations of familiar speech, as in the dramatists, and is still a prevalent dialect form. In OE, the base he supplied all parts of the third personal pronoun, singular and plural ... I don't know about you, but that last statement seems to be pretty direct: "he" is the root and all the third-person pronouns are derived from it.

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That's fine and I see no reason to disagree with it - but it has nothing to do with whether the root form was masculine or neuter. In fact, if anything, it supports my contention that the root form was masculine, especially when taken with the evidence (in the paper I referenced) of a default masculine gender, and that the root form which supplied all parts of the third personal pronoun was cognate with a masculine form in a related language. From where do you get the inference that the root he was neuter?

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You mean the American Studies professor I had who railed at me about "his-story" didn't really exist?

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Well of course if you tell me that you have a source which made the claim then I will take you at your word. I would have preferred a written reference, but I'll accept your point. However, the origin of the history/herstory move is pretty clearly a fanciful pun rather than a false etymology, as the OED confirms.

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As an example of a similar problem, take the history of the phrase "rule of thumb." There are actual professors who claim that the origin of this phrase is that common law once held that a man could beat his wife with a stick provided that the stick was no bigger than his thumb.

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Again, this simply isn't true. Despite what Claire Bride Cozzi wrote in the July 1986 issue of Ms. magazine, it simply isn't true. But the story is so widespread that the Canadian Medical Association Journal wrote an article that claimed it was MDs have key role in bringing ugly secret of wife abuse out of closet:

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"The expression 'rule of thumb' comes from an 1824 American law that permitted a husband to 'chastise his wife with a whip or rattan no wider than his thumb.'"

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This kind of thing is very common - a plague all etymologists have to learn to live with. The same is true of place-name studies - fanciful derivations are constantly trotted out as historical and authoritative.

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Because there is a difference between structure and use. The grammar and syntax of a language will tell you how to form a sentence.

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Strictly speaking this is a tautology, sentence being a grammatical term - an utterance which conforms to certain rules. All you are really saying here is that the rules enable you to form an utterance which conforms to certain rules.

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For example, it is incorrect to say: This sentence no verb.

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Not necessarily. It is incorrect within a certain set of grammatical conventions. Correctness of grammar and syntax remains just about the most controversial area of lingusitics.

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That's what slang is: Violation of the rules to achieve communication.

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Not quite - slang is typically more concerned with vocabulary and phraseology than grammar and syntax. Your are perhaps thinking of pidgins or creoles?

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So it would seem that I am claiming the point that it is usage that counts.

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Yes I thought so. But you confused me with The language uses a single word for both masculine and neuter objects. That doesn't mean the language in and of itself has any confusion over the two. That can come only from usage. It suggested that there was some distinction between language and usage - as if there was some platonic, usage-independent langauge.

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And simple observation of usage indicates that "he" is both masculine and neuter. There is a shift occurring such that "he" is losing its neuter meanings, but it hasn't succeeded yet and the majority of speakers still use it both in masculine and neuter ways.

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Simple observation? In some contexts perhaps the dual use remains, but this shift has surely been pretty much completed in many and widespread socio-linguistic contexts. In others, sure enough, it has hardly started.

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Pamboli: In contemporary English, the pronouns he and she sound egregious when used as gender-neutral terms.

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RhRain: So why do people use them that way?

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Because people don't always speak contemporary English - they may include archaisms, turns of phrase, quotation, dialect etc. My example, of my grandmother's usage was an example of a generational difference.

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You just contradicted yourself. You just said that usage is what counts. Well, if usage is what counts and all of the speakers involved with your grandmother and her peer group understood exactly what was being said, who are you to tell them that their usage is "egregious"?

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Did I say everyone understood? Actually quite the opposite - the example stands out in my own experience precisely because it was a source of much confusion. Those in my grandmother's immediate circle understood it - but speaking to neighbours and friends, she could confuse the hell out of them! A grand aunt, a rather proper English lady, used to get quite worked up because my grandmother could apparently not even remember the gender of her much-doted-upon Peke.

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You don't get to call somebody else's usage "egregious."

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Don't I? Who says? Actually, I don't. I said they sound egregious: that is to say, from the listener's standpoint. The receiver not the sender, if you will. All the other points about egregious usage shake out from that. My gardener frequently uses the forms brung and drug - I brung my pickup and drug that old log away - which sounds egregious to me, but it perfectly naturally to him. The egregiousness(?) is my response and in no way inherent in his usage, which even I would admit has a certain charm of its own.

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Pamboli: The claim that he can be used of God without implication of gender just doesn't wash.
RhRain: Says who? You? Why should we believe you? Besides, I don't know of anybody who seriously uses "he" with "god" without indicating that god is male.

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Says you, apparently! Or, rather, you are saying that God's gender is not implied but directly affirmed, which not only makes schraf's point for her, but puts a cherry on top and calls it trifle.

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The opinion of the Christian religion is that god is male.

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Really? The Christian Religion defined how? And only male? In September of 1999, speaking in Saint Peter's Square, the Pope referred to God the mother and said that God had both male and female nature. So referring to God as she would work quite as well as referring to God as he, in so far as one referred to God's gender.

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I am having a hard time coming up with a religion that truly thinks that god has no sex.

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Don't have a hard time - it's not difficult. Check out Sikhism. The Guru Granth Sahib says How can anyone describe God? When God is neither male nor female.

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See, "he" in the neuter is not used to indicate a specific person. Instead, it is used to indicate an abstract person.

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Why should I believe you?

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When referring to the concept of the president in general, "he" is used in the neuter because no specific president is being mentioned. But when talking about, say, Clinton or Bush, one would use "he" in the masculine because Clinton and Bush are specifically male.

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You're not from the United Kingdom, are you? You see, your argument is somewhat crippled by using as an example a post that has never been held by a woman. Try applying it to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and see how it works. It doesn't! I remember the spate of activity as civil servants - my father was one - changed their protocols which had until that point always referred to the Prime Minister as male. They certainly didn't think the term covered the female by virtue of referring to an abstract person.

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No, it really depends upon the specific instance. If the receiver is simply refusing to accept a common definition, it is not a requirement of the sender to change terms to coddle him.

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The difference here is that you are prescribing how you think the sender ought to behave rather than describing how senders are typically constrained to behave by real world circumstances. I was trying to describe the situation where the sender who wishes to be understood must modify their language in order to be understood. This, as in motherspeak, is a natural human phenomenon, not a prescriptive rule. The onus is on the sender, not because of any rule that says they should, but because that is how human language works.

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Why the immediate assumption that the person using "he" in the neuter was deliberately being sexist? The comment that brought this up wasn't asking for clarification. It was accusing.

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I re-read shcraf's post and cannot find anything that would support this. She did not say anything about someone being deliberately sexist - but that sexism is ingrained. This is actually almost entirely opposite to deliberate sexism - she was objecting, if I read her correctly, to inisudous, subconscious sexism permeating our discourse about God.

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Then you need to get some better colleagues. Either that or a backbone.

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Ooooo, hark at the catty tongue on her! Aren't we the forceful manly one?

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Old English had much more fluidity in which words meant what.

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Nah, sorry. Do you speak a strongly inflected language natively? I have generally found this problem with people who do not. Inflections are not quite the same word (even when spelled the same) and not quite different - they are, just as they are called, inflections. So in OE, two inflections, both heo are not quite the same - the difference is subtle, being not a difference lexically, but an inflection. In OE, for example, there is some evidence that the plural pronoun had a subtly different pronounciation from singular feminine forms - suggested in part by the occasional orhtography hiz - where the z is, of course, a yogh.

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the fact that the dative uses the masculine

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This rather begs the question, but also nicely sums up the problem. The dative perhaps does not use the masculine but shares, or converges to, or is largely but not wholly indistinguishable from, the same transcribed form.Or you could be right at this point, as i think you are, and the root form of pronouns in old English is masculine, and not neuter as I beleive you claimed at one point.

Another meaty post. Thanks Rh, this is good fun.You still have not given a clear reason why you think the root he- was neuter and not masculine. What is it in the quote you gave that leads you to hold that the root is neuter. I read the etymology in the OED as confirming that the root was masculine. For the life of me, I cannot see how you get from the quote to your claim.

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And since usage trumps everything, if people think that "history" is a concatenation of "his" and "story," then they'll rail against it as sexist ...
Yeah, usage trumps everything, but reality trumps usage. The word doesn't mean that no matter how many people think it does.

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Usage is reality. If the term herstory became comomn and contrasted with history, and these terms in usage were distinct, then despite its etymology history would change its current meaning. It's etymology would remain unchanged, and its historical usage would remain unchanged, but words at any point in time mean what the community of speakers use them to mean at that point in time. Dungeon in modern English is used for a subterranean cell - are you arguing that this is wrong and that in reality it means the central tower of a motte and bailey castle? In what reality?

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And what do you suppose should be the appropriate response to someone who insists the fancy is reality? Defer to him since "usage is more important"? Or point out that a mistake has been made?

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It would depend if I felt there were value in their usage. I find many uses of herstory by my friends a highly suitable term for succintly conveying what otherwise would take a paragraph every time they wished to make the point. I also rather like the cognate form ourstory, although I don't expect any of these terms will enter common usage. But if a neologism meets a purpose it will survive, however much you or I may dislike the term, the purpose, the fanciful etymology or anything else to do with it.

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Precisely. For someone to say that the rules are being broken, we need to actually take a look at those rules. And if we find out that the rules aren't being broken, then the person who claimed that they are has some 'splainin' to do, wouldn't you agree?

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I fail to see the point - can you clarify? It's probably me - bit of a hangover this morning. Thanks.

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I admit I'm being sloppy in my terminology. If you want to elevate the formality of this discussion, I'll be happy to, but I was trying to use terms for which most everyone would understand the gist of my point.

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Fair enough. However discussing the grammatical gender of root forms of pronouns is pretty technical, no?Nice example of something from Evita, but I cannot agree with you on the concept of a usage-indpendent language - at least not natural languages.

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Yes. Go out on the streets and listen to people talk. That is a much better gauge of how people use the language

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Then we'll need to agree to disagree because it is in this everyday speech that I most clearly see the gender specificity of pronouns.

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Ah, but schraf's comment wasn't that it "seemed" sexist "to her." It was that the language was "inherently" sexist.

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Ah, but I was replying to your response to my Jane Austen example.

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...it makes the point that she does not wish to acknowledge the reality of the other person.

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If person X and person Y are talking about "god" and person X is of the opinion that god is male, then where does Y get off in complaining about it? Weren't we talking about "god"? And isn't god male? If Y wishes to debate that, it isn't because of an inherent sexism on the part of X simply through the use of "he" for "god."

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I'm puzzled by this example as person x seems to be the only one whose opinion matters to you.In the current case you should remember that schraf was responding to a person "y" who eye-rolled my usage of she. The boot is pretty firmly on the other foot.

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I'm reminded of a teaching assistant who was a little too zealous in her pursuit of sexist language and marked a friend down for using "he"...to refer to Albert Einstein.

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That's priceless! Is it anectodal or do you have a reference? I know a couple of people who would love to use that as an example.

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I admit that it has been a while since I have read the New Testament from cover to cover, but I seem to recall that god is exclusively referred to in the masculine through words such as "father."

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Is that the same as saying that God has an exclusively male nature? I don't think so.

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... I do recall when an MP chastised me for referring to the Prime Minister as "Thatcher" rather than "Mrs. Thatcher."

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I've heard MPs call her much worse than that! One of her own backbenchers used to call "Great She-Elephant" - an honorific used in Swaziland, iirc.

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Sure it does. "The Chair is in control and all members must accede to his demands."

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Yuk! Do you know people who still talk that way? You must address the chair and all that? Anyway, wouldn't this be a highly formalized example and not everyday speech?

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So if person X truly thinks god is male, what pronoun would you suggest be used?

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I think they should use the pronoun they prefer. I used she for God and was eye-rolled, which eye-rolling schraf and I thought was what you might call poor etiquette. Schraf - who has been over this ground many times on this forum - contextualised the objection in her experience of years of this sort of thing.

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And is it really up to person X to change the way he speaks or is it up to person Y to change his attitude?

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Mutual accomodation is always better. I would prefer not be eye-rolled. But you know what it's like on internet forums when one side starts to criticize the other. If only a believer in a masculine God had had better etiquette, we could all have been saved this bother. But then we wouldn't have had this nice exchange, which I have enjoyed. All's well that ends well.

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What pronoun would you suggest one use to refer to Mr. Einstein?

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But the matter under discussion rather rests upon whether God's gender is as clear as Albie's, does it not?

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Pamboli: She did not say anything about someone being deliberately sexist - but that sexism is ingrained.
RhRain: How can a trait be ingrained and yet not manifest?

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Do you have a blind spot for the word deliberate and it's significance in this part of the discussion? Reread and concentrate on that word - you'll see my phrasing is very careful and, I think, accurate.Let's try it with some synonyms:She did not say anything about someone being intentionally sexist ...
She did not say anything about someone being calculatingly sexist ...
She did not say anything about someone being consciously sexist ...Have a gay day.[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 05-08-2003][This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 05-08-2003]

A lot here again Rh - thanks. Sadly, an extremely busy day so only a brief reply with three points:1: I notice you gave no opinion on the meaning of dungeon in reality. This, however, was very germane to the discussion - as you calim that words have meanings in reality which are distinct from their usage. You need to clarify this reality of yours, I think.2: That issue is given a twist by your supposed analog of 2+2=4 being independent of people saying 2+2=5. You need to clarify this too. Are you discussing a linguistic shift in which in English usage the word "five" comes to stand for the mathematical concept represented currently in French by "quatre" ? Or do you mean that people cannot claim the truth of a proposition 2+2=5, while still claiming to use the symbols each with their current significance?It strikes me as astonishing that anyone would claim that English, as she is spoke, involves abstract canonical meanings analogous to mathematics.3: Your still seem to miss the key point in what schraf was saying about ingrained sexism. Her entire point was that the comment was not deliberately sexist. She is not saying that Paul used a sexist term with clear, knowing it was sexist, and consciously using it wiht a sexist connotation. Surely it can't be clearer than that?btw, what's with the Einstein example? Why do keep repeating like a mantra? I thought my answer was reasonably precise - the situation is not analogous under the circumstances of the original discussion.

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I think the word "dungeon" has multiple meanings and context will make it clear which one is being used.

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Does dungeon have multiple meanings in reality? If so, how did it acquire these multiple meanings - by usage? If by usage, was there a point where dungeon had one meaning in reality and another meaning in usage? If so, when did the second meaning become a meaning in reality? If a community of users now starts using dungeon to mean seomthing different, what is the relationship of this new usage to dungeon's meaning or meanings in reality?

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Why? Mathematics is a language. While I certainly agree that linguistic languages are not nearly as formal and precise as mathematics, to act as if linguistic languages have no formal rules is just as astonishing to me.

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But the rules of mathematics are analytically true propositions, the rules of language, in particular English, are the result of usage. This is why 2+2 still equals 4, but yet we now say lambs rather than lambren.

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And it is unfair to insist that the person who is offended actually has a beef against the other when the other wasn't doing anything wrong.

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I agree. And Schraf's suggestion was not that Paul had a beef but that the language he used was inherently sexist. She was suggesting that he reacted to an ingrained sexism in the language that led him to respond in a way that he might not have done had given more thought. Such may have been hasty, but there is no doubt whatsoever (as schraf has confirmed) that she was not accusing Paul of deliberate sexism.

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If something is "ingrained," how can it fail to be deliberate? Isn't that the point behind an ingrained trait? It happens whether you want it to or not?

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Precisely - so it's not deliberate. Two minutes ago I sneezed. I happened whether I wanted it to or not. It was not deliberate.Actually I just realized what is happening. You are using a new usage of deliberate, based on its obvious derivation from "deli-berate." My sneezing was deli-berate, because if I had done it over the prosciutto (rather than over my keyboard) you would have berated me. It all makes sense now.

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If there is sexism built into the language, then one cannot help but engage in sexism by using it, yes? That's what being "ingrained" means, does it not?

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If one cannot help doing it, it's not deliberate is it. That's what deliberate means, does it not?

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It appears to me that Paul considers god to be male. Do you not agree with that assessment?

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I don't know, but it is likely.

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Therefore, what pronoun would you suggest he use to refer to god? Not you, not your opinion of god. We're talking about Paul. What does he think of god and therefore what pronoun would you suggest he use given his understanding of god.

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He (I assume) should use he. But he should not roll his eyes at another saying she.

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No, not your opinion of god. Paul's. Remember, schraf's comment was that the language was sexist because Paul used "he" to refer to god.

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No it wasn't. In fact, exactly the other way round. She suggested that Paul's objection was the result of the language's sexism. If schraf objected everytime someone used he of God she would get through a keyboard a week complaining on this forum.

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If a person truly thinks that god is male, how is it a fault of the language when said person refers to god as "he"? How is it a fault of the language when he takes issue with someone referring to god as "she"?

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At last - the point of the discussion. Took a while, didn't it?Schraf - was implying that Paul may have been so conditioned by the traditional usage of he for God that he was surprised to see she written.She was generously suggesting that it might not be Paul who was being sexist, but simply that he was so used to the sexually-biased term that he was astonished to see a different term used. I thought it was quite nice of her - I had a much harsher line of attack planned.

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Take the following two poems: ...

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The exact same words, but the exact opposite meaning. The only difference between the two is the emphasis and cadence. That isn't something the language can tell you. That's completely dependent upon usage.

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This is just about the worst use of an interesting linguistic phenomenon I have seen in many years!You appear, if I read you correctly - and I've read this a dozen times to make sure - to be saying that the language of this poem is just the words, and the punctuation is just usage. Is that right? Say it ain't so.For someone who objects to idiosyncratic usages and expects people to adjust to common usages you amaze me. First deliberate and now language.

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And then there's this little thing: Why is it we say "The big, red balloon" and not "the red, big balloon"? The latter is just as correct as the former. They mean the same thing, but for some reason it just doesn't sound right to say "red, big." There is nothing in the language that says that size comes before color. That's just the way we use the language.

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Let's see if we can get this nailed down. There is a reasonably well known rule in modern English for the order of adjectives: OPINION, APPEARANCE [measure, shape, condition], AGE, COLOR, ORIGIN, MATERIAL.Thus:The lovely old black Scottish wooden chair.
The nasty new large yellow English plastic chair.There are a couple of more complex subtleties - if opinion, appearance and age all appear, for example. But more importantly, the use of "good old" and other conjunctions as adjectival phrases rather than independent adjectives.The large old dog.
The good old large dog.Now what Rh is saying, I think, is that this is not a rule. But that seems to me to beg the question of what a rule in language is. Are rules only rules if they affect meaning? That seems very unlikely, and is not a concept I am familiar with.One of the most interesting things about modern English is that its speakers are exquisitely aware of word order, because wihtout inflections, there is often no other way of clarifying meaning. The boy shot the man being very different from The man shot the boy even though the word forms are indistinguishable.This sensitivity has been shown, by Jespersen and many others, to affect other areas. English speakers are often sticklers for the order of adjectives, perhaps because we sense it could affect meaning. There is doubt in our minds, ever listening for subtleties of word order, that a good big dog is perhaps not quite the same as a big good dog - that perhaps in one case its goodness is only a secondary quality when in another it is of the essence.

Sorry - this post slipped by me - too many long ones I think, and I scrolled past it.

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Pamboli: Do you speak a strongly inflected language natively?
Rhhain: A couple, actually.

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Cool. May I ask which ones? Just out of interest, no point being made. My native languages are English and Gaelic. It was the differences in grammar, and how the grammars feel in my mind that led me to linguistics.I have been particularly interested in how irregular verb forms feel like different and the same word at the same time. For exampleChi mi thu. I see you.
Chunnaic I saw you.Chi and chunnaic have obvious differences, are highly irregular, and really have no more in common as written or spoken forms than chair and chopsticks. But to the speaker they feel similar in a way that is difficult to convey. It's wonderful - Chomsky's term deep grammar hardly does it justice.

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... all of the third-person pronouns, including the masculine, come from the same root.

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And of course I agree with you. But what makes you think that root is neuter? I have given several reasons why I think it is masculine.

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then why the complaint that "he" in the masculine and "he" in the neuter is somehow sexist when, for Old English, they weren't?

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Because we're talking about modern usage. You claimed that one of the reasons he was not sexist was because its root was neuter. I disagree as to the neuter grammatical gender of its root.

Are Spanish and French strongly inflected? I was hoping for a celtic language, or Finnish, Icelandic or Lithuanian or some such. Oh well not to worry.Both wonderful languages. My Spanish friends (pamboli is a Mallorqui word) laugh at me when I talk to them now, because my pronounciation is so affected by the Latin American Spanish I hear around me.

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And in modern usage, "he" is also neuter.

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We'll agree to disagree?

Again I'll try to keep a reply to an interesting post brief.I think you're agreeing that the language of the poems by Youngquist is not just in the words but in the vocal characteristics?Our current issue is largely about what constitutes a rule in language and what the import of a rule is. I wouldn't make too fine a distinction between rule and convention, but I ought to clarify what I mean by rule. Admittedly I am following the usage drummed in to me during my unversity days, but I still think it is useful.Firstly, I think the most important issue is that rules do not appear to be independent of a community of users. Rules in language appear to develop in much the same way as other regulatory mechanisms in communities - no surprise there. One influential member may effectively change the rules, if the community, as a community, follows their authority. Identifying the community of users is essential to identifying the rules, as they are very subtle. In most communities, careful study reveals finely graded social interactions expressed through language. I think the use of guys is such a case, certainly in Scotland.Secondly, are the rules of language descriptive or prescriptive? The answer appears to be both, but in neither case absolutely: the import of the rule in both roles may vary. A rule such as the order of adjectives may be strongly descriptive, in that describes the commonest usage, but only mildly prescriptive, in that the community of users would be unlikely to consider a deviation from the rule to be wrong. Similarly a rule may be mildly descriptive, in that it doesn't reflect the everyday usage, but strongly prescriptive, in that the community of users, regard their common usage as wrong. This latter is a frequent source of issues in communities in social change, or where class and political tensions are common. A current case in point, lexical rather than grammatical, is the usage of Aye for Yes in Scotland, where people have been found in contempt of Court for using it, and where many people who never commonly use Yes would agree that Aye is wrong. Grammatical examples can also be found, of course, including, in some communities, the good old double negative.Some rules such as the relative order of subject, verb and object, are strong in both roles. It's no surprise that most rules are moderately descriptive and moderately prescriptive.

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Pamboli: He (I assume) should use he. But he should not roll his eyes at another saying she.

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Rh: Even if he thinks you're playing politics?

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You're saying Paul could fairly assume I was being insincere! Playing politics, rather than expressing a deeply-held belief?It's becoming pretty clear that you have one rule of behaviour for Paul and another for me. Paul is apparently allowed to read my mind and roll his eyes when assuming I am playing politics - and the implication of your phrasing is that he might assume I do so conciously and deliberately. Schraf, however, is being rude and wrong to make the much milder accusation that Paul may have been reacting to an issue of usage rather than an overtly socio-political one.I don't think I would survive a day living in a community of such Byzantine niceties as you appear to live in!

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Again, it is not nice to accuse your interlocutor of being insincere without justification, but if he thinks you're playing politics, isn't rolling ones eyes a natural response?

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Was Paul's implication any more justified than Schrafs?

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So she's accusing Paul of being insincere.

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No - she is suggesting that Paul may be reacting to an issue without giving it sufficient thought. Whether that was fair or not is a different issue, but you seem determined to heighten it to an accusation of deliberate rudeness, when Schraf actually took some pains to ensure that was avoided.

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In other words, Paul is insincere. Paul hasn't thought about it. Paul is intellectually lazy. Paul is just a mindless drone parroting somebody else's words without actually believing it or understanding it for himself.

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No such thing. If schraf had meant to say that, believe you me, she would have said it. When it comes to invective, she's one of the guys!

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I guess I'm even nicer: I took Paul to be sincere in his beliefs.

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Sincere in his belief that I was not sincere in mine, but playing politics? Charming.

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"Yeah, yeah" is language. Said in a sarcastic manner is usage.

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This is getting a little bizarre. Are you really saying that diction, intonation and other vocal effects are not part of language? Incredible.[Added by edit]BTW, in your example "Yeah, yeah", is the comma part of the language? Is the capital letter part of the language?[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 05-11-2003]

We seems to be grinding to a halt here, primarily around two issues.You seem to find it impossible, or perhaps just unsuitable to your present purpose, to separate out the deliberate and conscious from the casual and habitual. It is noticeable that in order to make your case you have now taking to exaggerate schraf's comments to the point of absurdity, accusing her of accusing Paul of being insincere, an idiot, having no brain of his own, incapable of putting together a coherent thought, parroting the lines of a sexist bastard etc. I think the need to exaggerate in this way reveals quite nicely that your argument doesn't hold water within the parameters of the original context. I hope you are merely exaggerating to throw the point you are trying to make into sharper constrast. Unfortunately, as the topic under discussion is concerned very much with subtleties of gradation in expression, sharpening the contrast consititutes a distortion rather than a clarification.For instance:

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Pamboli: ... you seem determined to heighten it to an accusation of deliberate rudeness, when Schraf actually took some pains to ensure that was avoided.
Rh: She delibertely invoked sexism. How is that avoiding invoking sexism?

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I think the distortion in your reply should be clear to everyone else reading this.

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Now, were you actually playing politics with Paul, knowing that he has a "thing" about god being male? I have no idea ...

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Actually, and by the by, no. In fact, in my response to Paul, I said I would not use the term if he really objected. That was sincere, although if he had objected he would have received a stern talking-to (posting-to?) along with my compliance.

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I think we're having a bit of a definitional difference in "language." I'm referring to the more formalistic aspects of the language and you seem to be referring to every aspect of communication.

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Yes we do seem to be working with slightly different definitions. The difficulty lies in the fact that language is just one aspect of communication, and the decision to draw the boundary of the term is, to an extent, arbitrary. Intonation and diction are vital in English - in some cases so vital that we must have signs to show this: question marks, exclamation marks (remember Seinfeld?), full stops, commas etc. (The capital letter at the beginning of the sentence is perhaps redundant today, given the full stop, but it was once useful to distinguish the stop from common scribal abbreviations.)It has often been asked why we do not have similar signs for expressing other intonations such as sarcasm. The answer appears to be threefold. Firstly, written language did not develop as a means of recording speech, but as a means of conveying over time and distance what might otherwise be conveyed in speech: thus written language developed its own means - primarily circumlocutary - of expressing tone when needed. Secondly, highly inflected languages, such as Greek, are often much more capable of expressing subtleties which are underscored by tone and gesture, or in uninflected languages conveyed almost entirely by tone and gesture. Thirdly, in the last couple of hundred years we have seen an increasing use of written signs for expressing intonations, from he "said" he would do it to the wonderful innovation of smilies.For my part, then, I cannot draw the boundary of what constitutes language at that which can be conveyed in written speech. Yeah, yeah is a very poor representation of the richness of language behind the utterance.[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 05-11-2003]