Grammatical gender reversals: A morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysis

This work analyzes grammatical gender reversals (feminine to masculine and masculine to feminine) in various languages by examining them both morphosyntactically and sociopragmatically, and is, to the best of my knowledge, the first such twofold analysis of grammatical gender reversals. The morphosy...

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Main Author: Steriopolo Olga
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: De Gruyter 2021-04-01
Series:Open Linguistics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2021-0008
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spelling doaj-cc9ad2f49cf74e53b03c03fc62c240ae2021-10-03T07:42:41ZengDe GruyterOpen Linguistics2300-99692021-04-017113616610.1515/opli-2021-0008Grammatical gender reversals: A morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysisSteriopolo Olga0ZAS, Berlin 10557, GermanyThis work analyzes grammatical gender reversals (feminine to masculine and masculine to feminine) in various languages by examining them both morphosyntactically and sociopragmatically, and is, to the best of my knowledge, the first such twofold analysis of grammatical gender reversals. The morphosyntactic analysis is based on my previous works on expressive morphology. The sociopragmatic analysis is based on the sociopragmatic framework developed in Acton (Acton, Eric K. 2014. Pragmatics and the social meaning of determiners. Doctoral Dissertation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University) and presents a continuation and development of my earlier work on sociopragmatics of gender reversals (Steriopolo, Olga. 2019a. “A sociopragmatic analysis of grammatical gender reversals.” In: Con temporary means and methods in ELT and applied linguistics, eds. C. Can, P. Patsala, and Z. Tatsioka, ch. 26: 535–55. Tallinn: LIF – Language in Focus). Grammatical gender reversals result in an evaluative meaning of the noun. I argue that they crosslinguistically use the same syntactic structure, in which an evaluative head [eval] is projected above a categorized noun, n. The evaluative head [eval] changes the grammatical gender of the base to which it attaches, resulting in a gender reversal with an evaluative meaning. This meaning varies across languages and directly depends on the sociocultural context, such as how masculinity and femininity are perceived and valued within a given society. The data presented in this research are, in order of appearance, from the following languages: Russian, Israeli Hebrew, Lak, Polish, Lokono, Teop, Palestinian Arabic, Manambu, Tigre, Maasai, Oromo, Benchnon, Halkomelen, and Alamblak.https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2021-0008grammatical genderevaluativeexpressive meaninggender reversalmorphosyntaxsociopragmatics
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Steriopolo Olga
spellingShingle Steriopolo Olga
Grammatical gender reversals: A morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysis
Open Linguistics
grammatical gender
evaluative
expressive meaning
gender reversal
morphosyntax
sociopragmatics
author_facet Steriopolo Olga
author_sort Steriopolo Olga
title Grammatical gender reversals: A morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysis
title_short Grammatical gender reversals: A morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysis
title_full Grammatical gender reversals: A morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysis
title_fullStr Grammatical gender reversals: A morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysis
title_full_unstemmed Grammatical gender reversals: A morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysis
title_sort grammatical gender reversals: a morphosyntactic and sociopragmatic analysis
publisher De Gruyter
series Open Linguistics
issn 2300-9969
publishDate 2021-04-01
description This work analyzes grammatical gender reversals (feminine to masculine and masculine to feminine) in various languages by examining them both morphosyntactically and sociopragmatically, and is, to the best of my knowledge, the first such twofold analysis of grammatical gender reversals. The morphosyntactic analysis is based on my previous works on expressive morphology. The sociopragmatic analysis is based on the sociopragmatic framework developed in Acton (Acton, Eric K. 2014. Pragmatics and the social meaning of determiners. Doctoral Dissertation. Stanford, CA: Stanford University) and presents a continuation and development of my earlier work on sociopragmatics of gender reversals (Steriopolo, Olga. 2019a. “A sociopragmatic analysis of grammatical gender reversals.” In: Con temporary means and methods in ELT and applied linguistics, eds. C. Can, P. Patsala, and Z. Tatsioka, ch. 26: 535–55. Tallinn: LIF – Language in Focus). Grammatical gender reversals result in an evaluative meaning of the noun. I argue that they crosslinguistically use the same syntactic structure, in which an evaluative head [eval] is projected above a categorized noun, n. The evaluative head [eval] changes the grammatical gender of the base to which it attaches, resulting in a gender reversal with an evaluative meaning. This meaning varies across languages and directly depends on the sociocultural context, such as how masculinity and femininity are perceived and valued within a given society. The data presented in this research are, in order of appearance, from the following languages: Russian, Israeli Hebrew, Lak, Polish, Lokono, Teop, Palestinian Arabic, Manambu, Tigre, Maasai, Oromo, Benchnon, Halkomelen, and Alamblak.
topic grammatical gender
evaluative
expressive meaning
gender reversal
morphosyntax
sociopragmatics
url https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2021-0008
work_keys_str_mv AT steriopoloolga grammaticalgenderreversalsamorphosyntacticandsociopragmaticanalysis
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