Dear Odysseus:
"Odysseus" <odysseus1479-at@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:odysseus1479-at-A97D53.23532308012008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> In article <woKgj.17049$DR7.12462@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> "N:dlzc D:aol T:com \(dlzc\)" <dlzc1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>>
>> The references I glanced at had the male-female
>> dichotomy extending back to a couple of thousand
>> years BC. Would that be Hindi then?
>
> I don't think Hindi is anywhere near that old, but they
> could have been referring to one of its ancestors,
> perhaps Sanskrit. Then again, it might be a completely
> unrelated Dravidian or Sino-Tibetan language.
>
> According to Wikipedia at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi>,
>
> "In Hindi, there are only two genders for nouns. All
> male human beings and male animals (or those
> animals and plants which are perceived to be
> "masculine") are masculine. All female human
> beings and female animals (or those animals and
> plants which are perceived to be "feminine") are
> feminine. Things, inanimate articles and abstract
> nouns are also either masculine or feminine
> according to convention, [...]"
>
> Nothing there about an unmodified _vs_ modified
> distinction manifesting in gender, but of course
> it's only a concise introduction.
Possibly covered in "convention".
As part of my penance for being ignorant on the topic:
http://www.languageinindia.com/sep2001/genderandlang.html
.... tamil
http://orissagov.nic.in/e-magazine/Orissareview/jun2005/engpdf/gender_bias_a_sociology_approach.pdf
.... sanskrit
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-1563488_ITM
.... Setswana (Botswana)
http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/getdo***ent.aspx?logid=5&id=46AA274C-F900-478B-9B43-C8B8702B12D5
.... lithuanian "every table is he, every chair is she"
http://www.jewishmosaic.org/torah/show_torah/20
.... interesting variants on male/female in the torah
http://www.thoughtware.com.au/philosophy/debate/***lang.html
.... maybe bias does not arise from langauge forms
http://accurapid.com/journal/40gender.htm
... gender bias in language is not required to yield gender bias
in fact.
http://www.yoism.org/?q=node/25
.... yoism
I'll do a little more on language in matriarchal societies, to
see what rears its head there.
Personally, I wonder if language limits / guides what we do, or
whether langauge is only a descriptor of where we have been (even
if that includes future planning). I don't recall having been
guided by what I can describe. But as far as peer involvement,
being convinced to do something comes via language.
I wonder what all this hijack had to do with Ray Kurzweil?
David A. Smith
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