LINGUIST List 3.267

Thu 19 Mar 1992

Qs: Heine, Prehistory, Gender

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. "Jeff Turley", Heine's Grammatical Chains
2. RUTH, Early Spoken language dating - query from Ruth Berman
3. , Re: 3.260 Qs: Gender-Specific Pronouns
4. (UTH, languages with the femimine as the unmarked case

Does anyone know if Bernd Heine's paper "Grammatical Chains as
 Linguistic Categories" has been published?

Jeff Turley "When I first saw
Department of Spanish and Portuguese fingers, I said 'I'll take ten
Brigham Young University of those!'"
Provo, UT 84602 --Alex F. Caldiero
801-378-2005

A nonlinguist colleague of mine interested in prehistory wants
to know if there is any way of finding out when people think
human beings first used language - in the linguists' sense
of the term. Since the issue of the origin of language has
been so discredited by linguists, I was wondering if in
recent research anthropology and/or archaeology might have
come up with some ideas on when, if not where, people
first started talking.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation - references to
books that might be obtainalbe in this part of the world
would be very helpful, too, if they address the issue
in a halfway lucid fas[Phion.

Ruth Berman, Linguistics Department, Tel Aviv University

Message 3: Re: 3.260 Qs: Gender-Specific Pronouns

Has anyone proposed the use of "it" as a way of getting over gender problems?
It's singular, it could be elevated to the status of being gender-neutral
(rather than gender-denying), it handles institutions-qua-persons, and would
get us ready for the eventual success of AI.

John Barnden
Computing Research Laboratory
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM 88003

jbarndennmsu.edu
(505) 646-6235
FAX: (505) 646-6218

1. Are there any languages with the femimine gender as the unmarked or
 generic case, and the masculine as the marked?

2. If such languages exist, how "sexist" do the speakers appear to be?

(I know I am be opening a can of worms.)

Edward G. Kovach