Presented as part of the ANU Linguistics Seminar Series

Gender is a grammatical category in the Indo-European languages (and in some but by no means all other language families). One would assume that, in nouns designating animate beings, sex and gender should coincide, but that is far from being the case. Some obvious exceptions are Ger das Mädchen (neuter) ‘girl’, das Weib (archaic) (neuter) ‘woman’, Italian la spia ‘spy’ (feminine, even if the spy is a man), Russian должностнóе лицо dolžnostnoe lico (neuter) 'official (man/ woman)'.

Today European gender languages have problems with the designations of professions. One would imagine that there should be a fem form of every professional name, but in some languages this is not the case, or the theoretical fem form is not actually used. There are fem forms of low-status occupations or occupations where women have traditionally been represented, but for professions formerly reserved for men in some European languages, notably Italian and Russian, it is normal to use the masculine form even to designate a woman, e.g. It Antonella Tomassini, avvocato (m.) matrimonialista ‘Antonella Tomassini, marriage lawyer’, Ru Татьяна Стукалова, адвокат Сергея Филина Tat’jana Stukalova, advokat (m.) Sergeja Filina ‘Tat’jana Stukalova, Sergej Filin’s lawyer’. German, on the other hand, and increasingly also, e.g. Spanish, prefer the use of feminine agentives when to designate women professionals.

No knowledge of Russian or any other European language is assumed.