Constructing Feminine to Mean

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A01=Abdelkader Fassi Fehri
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Arab studies
Arabic
atomicity
Author_Abdelkader Fassi Fehri
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cognitive science
comparative linguistics
comparative syntax
constructional gender
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generative model
grammar
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linguistics
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parametric variation
philosophy of language
pluratives
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quantification
quantifiers
singulatives
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typology

Product details

  • ISBN 9781498574556
  • Weight: 576g
  • Dimensions: 158 x 232mm
  • Publication Date: 15 Aug 2018
  • Publisher: Lexington Books
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
  • Language: English
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Linguistic gender is a complex and amazing category that has puzzled and still puzzles theoretical linguists, typologists, philosophers, cognitive scientists, didacticians, as well as scholars of anthropology, culture, and even mystical (divine) sufism. In Standard and colloquial Arabic varieties, feminine morphology (unlike “common sense”) is not dedicated to mark beings of the female sex (or “natural gender”). When you name the female of a “lion” (ʔasad) or a “donkey” (ḥimaar), you use different words (labuʔat or ʔataan), as if the male and female of the same species are linguistically conceived as completely unrelated entities. When you “feminize” words like “bee” (naḥl) or “pigeon” (ḥamaam), the outcome is not a noun for the animal with a different sex, but a singular of the collective “bees,” “one bee” (naḥl-at), or an individual pigeon (ḥamaam-at). In the opposite direction, when a singular noun “carpenter” (najjar) is feminized, the (unexpected) result is a special plural, or rather a group, “carpenters as a professional group” (najjar-at). Since some of these words (contrastively) possess “normal” masculine plurals, or masculine singulars, I propose to distinguish atomicities (which are broadly “masculine”) from unities (which are “feminine”). The diversity of feminine senses is also manifested when you feminize an inherently masculine noun like “father” (ʔab), “uncle” (ʕamm), etc. The outcome (in the appropriate performative context) is that you are endearing your father or uncle, rather than “womanizing” him. More “unorthodox” senses are evaluative, pejorative, diminutive, augmentative, etc. It is striking that gender not only plays a central role in shaping individuation, or perspectizing plurality, but it is also used to distinguish what we count, or what we quantifier over. In Arabic, when you count numbers in sequence (three, four, five, six, etc.), you use the feminine, but when you count objects, you have to “negotiate” for gender, due to the “gender polarity” constraint. Your quantifier senses, which are also subtly built in the grammar, equally negotiate for gender. Wide cross-linguistic comparison extends the inventories of features, mechanisms, and typological notions used, to languages like Hebrew, Berber, Celtic, Germanic, Romance, Amazonian, etc. On the whole, gender is far from being parasitic in the grammar of Arabic or any language (including “classifier” languages). It is central as it has never been.
Abdelkader Fassi Fehri is professor of arts and human sciences at Mohammed V University of Rabat