Gender in Modern Hebrew – An Example
I think it might be informative to look at how av (usually translated “father”) and its plural, avot, work in Modern Hebrew. Even though we can’t directly conclude anything about ancient Hebrew or Greek from Modern Hebrew, we can learn more about how gender — at least potentially — works in human language.
In no particular order, here are some facts about av and avot in Modern Hebrew:
- When people talk about their literal father, one word they use is av.* (When they talk about their mother, one word is em.)
- The word av is grammatically masculine.
- The plural avot is grammatically masculine, even though it ends in -ot which is often reserved for feminine plurals.
- When Lucy, the “first human,” was discovered, she was called av kadmon in Hebrew, literally “original av.”
- When people talk about how “fathers” are different than “mothers,” the words they use are avot and imahot (the plural of em).
- The Hebrew for “old-age home” is bet avot, literally, “house of avot.” (The phrase applies equally to men and women.)
- When people talk about their “ancestors,” the word they use is avot. (Again, the phrase does not have specifically male connotations.)
It seems to me that if a theory of gender and language doesn’t allow for the possabilites above, it’s probably inaccurate, or, at least, incomplete, so we shouldn’t use that theory to try to understand ancient languages.
(*) In addition to av, there’s a less formal word aba in Hebrew. The two words approximate the difference between “father” and “dad.”
Why Both Kings and Queens Can Be Parents
Grammatical and Real-World Gender, Part II
Earlier, I wrote about the difference between grammatical gender and real-world (or semantic) gender. I noted that the former doesn’t always indicate the latter. For example, personne in French is grammatically feminine but semantically inclusive.
As promised, here’s a little bit about how to tease the two kinds of gender apart.
Ellipsis
One good way is to use ellipsis, such as “and so did…” or “and so is….” because ellipsis requires meanings to match up (semantic identity) but not the grammar.
For example:
(1) John went to the party and so did Mary.
It’s clear that the second half of the sentence is short for “Mary went to the party,” even though “and so did Mary went to the party” isn’t grammatical in English. In other words, ellipsis here copies the meaning of “went” but not the grammar of “went.”
Another example comes from:
(2) John loves his mother and so does Mary.
This is ambiguous. Either Mary loves John’s mother, or Mary loves her own mother. This second meaning is particularly interesting for us, because it shows us again that the “and so” ellipsis construction copies meaning and not form. (We also learn that “his” and “her” in English mean the same thing.)
Ellipsis In English
With this in mind, we can compare four sentences:
(3) John is an actor and so is Mary.
(4) John is a parent and so is Mary.
(5) *John is a father and so is Mary.
(6) *John is a king and so is Mary.
The asterisks indicate the ungrammatical sentences.
The examples in (3) and (4) are fine because “actor” and “parent” in English are gender-neutral in the real world. That is, men and women can both be actors and parents, even in the dialects that use the word “actress” for a woman actor.
By contrast, in English, only men can be fathers and kings.
Ellipsis In Other Languages
The reason this is so important is that the pattern in (3)-(6) is the same even in languages that have grammatical gender. For example, in Modern Hebrew:
(3′) John sachkan v’gam Mary [lit.: John actor and-also Mary]
(4′) John horeh v’gam Mary [lit.: John parent and-also Mary]
(5′) *John aba v’gam Mary [lit.: John father and-also Mary]
(6′) *John melech v’gam Mary [lit.: John king and-also Mary]
Just to be clear, (3′) is grammatical in Hebrew even though *Mary sachkan ["Mary actor"] is not, because Hebrew requires Mary sachkanit ["Mary actress"]. In other words, Hebrew has masculine and feminine words for “actor” (sachkan and sachkanit, respectively). Generally, the masculine word is used for men, and the feminine for women. But we see from ellipses that this difference is purely a matter of grammar, not of meaning.
Toward Two Kinds of Gender
The pattern in (3)-(6) and (3′)-(6′) works the same way in modern languages across diverse language groups: German, French, Russian, Arabic, and more. In other words, kings and queens seem to be different in ways that actors and actresses are not, and the difference doesn’t depend on which language is used to express it.
Some languages have masculine and feminine forms for “actor” and “actress,” but even so, ellipsis shows us that the words mean the same thing.
Further investigation shows us that the following kinds of words are the same for men and women: nouns in general, including jobs, positions, functions, roles, etc. By contrast, the following are generally not: royalty (king, queen, and sometimes lower ranks), family roles (father, mother, and sometimes son, daughter, brother, sister), and gender roles (man, women).
A Note on Parenthood
We stop to note that this answers an important question: In languages that have grammatical gender, what’s the difference between “father” and “[male] parent,” or between “mother” and “[female] parent”? The answer is that, like in English, “parent” is the non-gendered word, while “mother” and “father” are the gendered words. In other words, both men and women can be parents, but only men can be fathers, and only women mothers. This fact doesn’t depend on the grammatical gender of any of the words involved. (As chance would have it, “parent” in Modern Hebrew is horeh, and the word is masculine. There is no feminine word “parent.”)
Some Results
Because all languages seem to work the same way in the core cases, we can use the data about modern languages to understand ancient ones. What we expect, and what we find, is that ancient Greek and Hebrew have grammatical gender that only sometimes matches up with real-world gender.
In particular, basileus and melech are specifically a man (“king”), while basilissa and malka are specifically a woman (“queen”). They do not mean “ruler.” Similarly, patros and av are masculine in the real word (semantically) as well as grammatically, and meter and em are feminine. They do not mean “parent.”
Plurals
It is tempting to extrapolate the pattern we have seen with singular nouns and apply it to plural ones, too, but it’s a mistake — a topic I’ll turn to soon.
From AGS-
Recent Comments
