quote:

Originally posted by Lira Ren & Stimpy! Happy, happy, happy, joy, joy, joy I understand your point, but I told her she was on a path that linguists find interesting, not that there was a perfect match, because the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is closely related to what she's saying... albeit with the polarity reversed, depending on how you look at it. Given her starting point, I could have suggested cognitive linguistics and mentioned "Fire, Women, and other Dangerous Things" which will always be my favourite book title... but the way she thinks about language reminds me a lot of my father, as he is heavily influenced by Jungian psychology and every time I tell him about my research he says "but can't that be explained by the collective unconscious?" so I thought that was the best place for her to start is the bit that really piqued his interest. My dad was thrilled when I told him about linguistic relativity, because it's sort of how he thinks, but on its head, whereas he finds cognitive linguistics "dry". Funnily enough, I had also typed "chicken and egg" and clicked on preview reply to see if there were any typos when I realised she had beaten me to it.

Hah! I knew my thought had merit lol. The fact that a layperson thinks/feels these things validates the whole nature of it (linguistics, the mind, etc) Imo.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J I would argue it's more "nature versus nurture" - the question of whether language arises to reflect the inner workings of our minds, or whether our tendency to think in language means our language shapes our thoughts. And like "nature versus nurture", as far as I'm aware linguists generally believe the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Tomayto, tomahto, no? This convo is becoming meta lol.

It feels intuitive that some of the first words humans ever used probably mimicked the sound the thing the word refers to makes. Well, onomatopoeia. A human's perception of the thing in the world affected how the word sounded. It's fascinating to think how language somehow, gradually, evolved to the degree that at some point someone had enough words to use to explain a new concept to someone else without necessarily demonstrating the concept physically.

To me, to simply say that either language shapes our thinking or our thinking shapes our language wouldn't quite cut it, but hearing my Danish girlfriend try to communicate a phone number to her family over the phone clearly shows that language shapes the thinking of at least the Danish, and not always in a good way!

Right. But let's bring it back to my specific question then, about the masculine/feminization of words and grammar. This is exactly why I was asking how/why it became a thing.

Well put it like this. I think it's self evident that grammatical genders don't represent a collective human subconscious because many languages simply don't have them. If, for example, humans innately believed there was something "masculine" about tables and "feminine" about doors, as suggested by German, that would crop up all over the world. But as a native English speaker, I think that notion is nonsensical. They're inanimate objects made out of wood. Of course they don't have genders.

If native German speakers do walk around thinking about tables as somehow male in nature, that demonstrates language is shaping their thoughts, but it proves nothing about the inverse. So the two notions are not circular.

Also, it's worth noting the study of the relationship between language and meaning is actually less the domain of linguistics than it is semiotics.

___________________
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> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24
> Surface Tension [Progressive Trance]
> Back To Deep [Deep Trippy House]
> Terra Nova [Modern Progressive Trance]

If you enjoy any of these sets and want to hear me live, I'll be playing a 2 hour progressive trance set at Basing House in Shoreditch, London on 11th October.
I'm also a resident at our bi-monthly party Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

That sounds more like anthropomorphising objects using gender. I mean, yeah duh. Just gonna reiterate what I already said which is that there exists some innate feeling about words that makes them either masculine or feminine. Language arose to communicate thoughts and ideas, thoughts and ideas shaped the world, ideas about the world came to inform the language, and so on and so on.

I guess my question or whatever point I'm making depends on one's spiritual beliefs, and I believe within all humans exists both the divine masculine and feminine, that I do think HAS to play some role in the continued assignment of gender to words and grammar, well after the point of them having a clear rule of attachment/modification.

I understand the origin of the rules as Lira explained it. The reason I wanted to know is because in my French class, someone asked how to know which words were masculine or feminine. And the teacher said it's just the vocabulary at this point, just have to memorize the words. Well who and what decided that? Hence my joke about the patriarchy.

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J Also, it's worth noting the study of the relationship between language and meaning is actually less the domain of linguistics than it is semiotics.

Oh? Well then who is TA's resident Robert Langdon? Lololol

Last edited by Silky Johnson on Sep-28-2024 at 16:59

Yeah, I'm afraid that theory just isn't borne out in practice. There are many, many words which have opposite grammatical genders in different languages. The aforementioned "table" is masculine in German and Polish but feminine in Spanish and French. It's completely arbitrary.

___________________
Mixes:
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24
> Surface Tension [Progressive Trance]
> Back To Deep [Deep Trippy House]
> Terra Nova [Modern Progressive Trance]

If you enjoy any of these sets and want to hear me live, I'll be playing a 2 hour progressive trance set at Basing House in Shoreditch, London on 11th October.
I'm also a resident at our bi-monthly party Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

Thanks. I appreciate your tidy, yet boring contribution.

Like the Microsoft paperclip, I'm here to provide the help nobody wants.

___________________
Mixes:
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24
> Surface Tension [Progressive Trance]
> Back To Deep [Deep Trippy House]
> Terra Nova [Modern Progressive Trance]

If you enjoy any of these sets and want to hear me live, I'll be playing a 2 hour progressive trance set at Basing House in Shoreditch, London on 11th October.
I'm also a resident at our bi-monthly party Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

THREAD CLOSED