From @YaleVM.YCC.YALE.EDU:LOJBAN@CUVMB.BITNET Wed Aug 18 16:08:19 1993 Received: from ELI.CS.YALE.EDU by NEBULA.SYSTEMSZ.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 18 Aug 1993 10:09:42 -0400 Received: from YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU by eli.CS.YALE.EDU via SMTP; Wed, 18 Aug 1993 10:09:39 -0400 Message-Id: <199308181409.AA02895@eli.CS.YALE.EDU> Received: from CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU by YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8381; Wed, 18 Aug 93 10:08:24 EDT Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Mailer R2.07) with BSMTP id 4338; Wed, 18 Aug 93 10:11:01 EDT Date: Wed, 18 Aug 1993 15:08:19 +0100 Reply-To: Colin Fine Sender: Lojban list From: Colin Fine Subject: Re: Castrated sexism? To: Erik Rauch Status: O X-Status: Philip asseverates: +++++++++++> Umm...just a nit to pick. The English "he" is historically neuter. The masculine merged with the neuter very early, and by the 1400's there was almost no trace of it left. English has no masculine, only feminine and neuter. That is the reason the default sex is "masculine". Historically, it was (and remains) neuter/unknown. >++++++++++++ Colin disagrees. The English 'he' is historically masculine. English lost grammatical gender during the change from old to middle English, and has not had it since. However, it had and retains a three-way system in 3rd person singular pronouns (he/she/it. Notice that in ME the possessive forms were often his/her/his, sometimes the neuter was 'hit', same as the subject/object forms. 'its' is a late ME development I think). As in many languages which distinguish masculine from feminine, the masculine form is also used for common/unspecified - I cannot think of any languages where a neuter is used for common-gender animates. The lack of a common pronoun has been felt for at least 200 years - a number of C18 writers consistently used 'they ' and 'their' as singular pronouns of common gender. ======================================================================== There are no extraordinary people. | Colin Fine Whoever tells you otherwise is | Dept of Computing lying to you. | University of Bradford There are only ever ordinary people,| Bradford, W. Yorks, England Who do what they do - | BD7 1DP The extraordinary thing is the | Tel: 0274 733680 (h), 383915 (w) extraordinary things that they do!| c.j.fine@bradford.ac.uk | (cfine@cix.compulink.co.uk; .e'o ko sarji la lojban. | cjfine@gn.apc.org) EXLIB = EXpansion of LIBrary systems for the visually disadvantaged ========================================================================