Draft:Latin genders
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| Latin grammar |
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In semantics, gender (also known as natural gender) is a generic category of things according to which nouns, adjectives, numbers, verbs and prepositions are selected[i]. Gender as a category of things differs from grammatical gender because it is not a class of nouns. Moreover, 'natural' in 'natural gender' is a misnomer because gender is a socially and linguistically construed category, not a category provided by Nature.
Languages differ as for what gets generified. Speakers of some languages construe a binary system of sex through gender whereas speakers of other languages don't[ii]. Latin is a langauge in which the female-male system ('sex') is generified, that is, it is a language wherein nouns for females are accompanied by inflected words ending in a (bella, ūna, vīsa, ...) and nouns for males are accompanied by inflected words ending in us (bellus, ūnus, vīsus, ...). However, inflected words ending in a are selected not only for females, but also for fruit trees; and those ending in us are selected not only for males, but also for humans irrespectively of sex. From a systemic perspective, there is a functional mapping from genders to inflectional endings, but not the other way round[iii].
In Latin, there are a few frequent gender contrasts:
- personal vs impersonal
- females vs males
- fruits vs fruit trees
Personal vs impersonal[edit]
Beings are divided into persons and stuff. In most genres of text, persons can be mortal or immortal, that is, they include humans and gods/goddesses; and stuff consists of the remaining beings, including pets and farm animals. In some genres such as fables, animals of any species count as persons.
Latin pronouns often divide beings between these two genders.
Interrogative pronouns
- Quis est intus? (Who is inside?)
- Quid est intus? (What is inside?)
Indefinite pronouns
- Aliquis est intus. (Someone is inside.)
- Aliquid est intus. (Something is inside.)
Word agreement
- Aliquis vīsus est. (Someone was seen.)
- Aliquid vīsum est. (Something was seen.)
Females vs males[edit]
Most humans are interested in the sex of other humans, but in our agrarian societies we humans may also want to know the sex of the animals that we breed. For that reason, different languages include different lists of animal species whose sex is construed through gender, but in no language thus far insects and plants belong to such a list[iv]. In Latin, humans, deities, pets and farm animals are typically divided into females and males whereas most wild animals are referred to irrespectively of sex[v].
In Latin, proper nouns were ascribed to humans according to their sex. If the stem of proper nouns end in a vowel, the nominative noun ends in a vowel for females and it ends in "s" for males. The stem for most proper nouns for females end either in "a", "ē" or consonants.
| Gender | -a | -e | -o | -u | -r | -o(n) | -n | -(d) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| females | Minerva | Circē | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | Doris |
| Minervam | Circēn | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | Dorida | |
| males | Habinnas | Eurīpidēs | Ascyltos | Mārcus | Caesar | Cicerō | Platōn | -- |
| Habinnam | Eurīpidēn | Ascylton | Mārcum | Caesarem | Cicerōnem | Platōna | -- |
Most common nouns for humans, pets and farm animals are selected according to sex:
| Gender | adult | young | child/teen | chicken | pigeon | cow | horse |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| females | mulier | fēmina | puella | gallīna | columba | vacca | equa |
| mulierem | fēminam | puellam | gallīnam | columba | vaccam | equam | |
| males | homō | vir | puer | gallus | columbus | torus | equos |
| hominem | virum | puer | gallus | columbus | torum | equom |
However, there are a few common nouns such as testis (the witness) for which someone's sex stays covert until an inflected word is selected according to it.
Word agreement
- Mulier vīsa est. (The woman was seen.)
- Homō vīsus est. (The man was seen.)
Word selection according to sex
- Testis locūta est. (The female witness spoke.)
- Testis locūtus est. (The male witness spoke.)
Fruits vs fruit trees[edit]
Fruit plants are divided into two developmental stages: fruits and fruit trees.
| Gender | apple | pere | citrus | peach |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| fruit | mālum | pirum | citrum | persicum |
| fruit tree | mālus | pirus | citrus | persicus |
Word agreement
- Mālum vīsum est. (The apple was seen.)
- Mālus vīsa est. (The apple tree was seen.)
Citations[edit]
- ^ We should then ask whether these groups [of nouns] are arbitrary. The answer is that there is always a semantic “core” to the system. That is, there is an overlap between the nouns which take a particular set of agreements and some semantic feature. (This overlap may be greater or smaller, as we shall see in Chapter 32.) – Greville G. Corbett. 2013. Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) WALS Online (v2020.3) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7385533 (Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/31, Accessed on 2024-05-11.)
- ^ In the familiar systems such as French and German, and indeed in the majority, the link [between a particular set of agreements and some semantic features] is to biological sex. – Greville G. Corbett. 2013. Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) WALS Online (v2020.3) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7385533 (Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/31, Accessed on 2024-05-11.)
- ^ At one end of the scale [of correspondence between set of agreements and sexual categories], in sex-based systems the genders may match the semantic category almost completely. Examples can be found in Dravidian languages, where for instance in Tamil, it is almost correct to say that nouns denoting male humans are masculine, and masculine nouns denote male humans. There is more to be said, since this gender also includes male deities, but the statement captures the essence of the system. Compare this with the very different system of a typical Indo-European language like French or Russian, where it is also correct to say that nouns denoting males are typically masculine, but where the masculine nouns include a large proportion of nouns which do not denote males. We may also find exceptions where nouns denoting humans of one sex are found in the ‘wrong’ gender. Typically, however, these nouns are not fully in that gender but take agreements of more than one type and are "hybrid nouns" – Greville G. Corbett. 2013. Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) WALS Online (v2020.3) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7385533 (Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/31, Accessed on 2024-05-11.)
- ^ These languages may set the threshold for "sex differentiability" at different points. Sex distinctions extend to insects and plants, but no language has been reported as including reference to their biological sex within a grammatical system. Humans are most interested in the sex of other humans, and the threshold may well be set here. – Greville G. Corbett. 2013. Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) WALS Online (v2020.3) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7385533 (Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/31, Accessed on 2024-05-11.)
- ^ Other languages set the threshold lower. In Russian, sex-differentiability extends to creatures whose sex matters to humans (that is, primarily animals which humans breed), or where the difference is striking (as with lions); nouns which fall below the threshold may be in any gender (thus ‘shark’ is feminine and ‘dolphin’ is masculine). – Greville G. Corbett. 2013. Sex-based and Non-sex-based Gender Systems. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) WALS Online (v2020.3) [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7385533 (Available online at http://wals.info/chapter/31, Accessed on 2024-05-11.)