Gender Shifts in the History of English (Studies in English Language) (Hardcover)

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Review
"Those who pick this book up expecting a dry study of inflection ... will be delighted to find the Curzan has made linguistic research both accessible and relevant.... This volume is a must-read for anyone interested in the history of English, sociolinguistics, or language and gender. Essential." Choice

Product Description
Based on extensive research, Anne Curzan's study makes a major contribution by providing historical perspective on controversial questions regarding the continuing evolution of gender definition. How and why did grammatical gender gradually disappear from English and get replaced by a system where the gender of nouns and the use of personal pronouns depend on the natural gender of the referent? How is this shift related to "irregular agreement" (she for ships) and "sexist" language use (generic he) in Modern English? Finally, how is the language continuing to evolve 0n these respects?

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First Sentence:
In the fifth century BC, according to Aristotle's account, Protagoras first created the labels masculine, feminine, and neuter for Greek nouns, and langauge scholars have been trying to explain the relationship of grammatical gender categories to the world around them ever since. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
masculine anaphoric pronouns, feminine anaphoric pronouns, grammatical gender agreement, natural gender system, generic pronoun problem, semantic gender system, masculine inanimate nouns, dialectal spread, gender agreement system, anaphoric gender agreement, grammatical gender system, anaphoric pronoun references, grammatical gender categories, gender concord, referential gender, pronoun hit, anaphoric personal pronouns, creole theories, exceptional nouns, inanimate antecedents, neuter reference, antecedent noun phrase, gender shift, anaphoric agreement, gendered words Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Old English, Middle English, Modern English, Helsinki Corpus, Old Norse, Ancrene Wisse, West Saxon, Old French, Alfred's Boethius, Lambeth Homilies, Peterborough Chronicle, United States, Vespasian Homilies, Hali Meidhad, Alfred's Cura Pastoralis, Alfred's Introduction, American English, Ben Jonson, Introduction Contemporary, Layamon's Brut, Robin Lakoff, Sawles Warde New!
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!

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