Librarything…
- Theories of Case (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics) by Miriam ButtCambridge University Press (2006), Paperback, 272 pages
- A History of Ancient Greek: From the Beginnings to Late Antiquity by A.-F. ChristidisCambridge University Press (2007), Edition: Rev. & Expanded Translation of the Greek Text, Hardcover, 1660 pages
- Cognitive Linguistics (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics) by William CroftCambridge University Press (2004), Edition: 1St Edition, Paperback, 372 pages
- From Molecule to Metaphor: A Neural Theory of Language (A Bradford Book) by Jerome FeldmanThe MIT Press (2006), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 384 pages
- Concept, Image, and Symbol (Cognitive Linguistic Research) by Ronald W. LangackerMouton De Gruyter (2002), Edition: 2, Paperback, 395 pages
All Rights Reserved
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Pingback: Better Bibles Blog
or maybe grammatical gender is different than natural gender…
What?! This is a denial of verbal plenary inspiration, you liberal pseudo-Evangelical hotshot!
…sigh.
No, it’s based on understanding how languages work. Allow me to quote from Don Fairbairn, Professor of Historical Theology at Gordon-Conwell Seminary’s Charlotte campus: “Another concept that needs explanation is gender. This maybe a surprising concept to English speakers, because in English,there is no such thing as purely grammatical gender. If a word refers to a man, a boy, or (in some cases) a male animal, it is considered masculine, and the pronoun “he” refers to it. If it refers to a woman, a girl, or (again, only in some cases) a female animal, it is considered feminine, and the pronoun ‘she’ refers to it. In most other cases, the object or idea is considered neuter,and the pronoun ‘it’ refers to it. (There are a few exceptions, such as referring to the Christian Church or to a ship as ‘she’.” You really shouldn’t slander people the way you did Esteban, especially when you don’t even know what you’re talking about!
rather than “it.”) In most other languages, grammatical gender
is different from and often unrelated to actual maleness or femaleness.
Some languages (like French) have no grammatically
neuter words—all are masculine or feminine. Most European
languages have words of all three genders, but in all except English,
a word can be grammatically masculine or feminine even
if it obviously refers to a thing, rather than to a male or female.
For example, in Greek and Latin, the words for the abstract virtues
(wisdom, goodness, justice) are all grammatically feminine
and are thus referred to as “she” rather than “it.”
Hi Dr. Blomberg,
Esteban is being facetious…one of the problems of language on the internet. It’s hard to tell.
I sincerely regret that Dr Blomberg has wasted some of his very valuable time by replying to my tongue-in-cheek comment, but I must say that is the single most awesome thing that has happened to me in my 16 years as an active user of the Internet. The only thing that could top this would be if the infallible Moisés Silva deigned to comment on my blog one of these days!
Be that as it may, the real tragedy is that such a comment could not readily be recognized as facetious, because there are real live people out there who would sincerely say that word for word in response to this post.
Its okay, Esteban, twenty years from now everyone will see more clearly that English has changed and that gender inclusive is gender accurate.
Well, except for those people who are convinced that language change in of itself is evil and depend no Webster’s 1828 dictionary for the true meaning of all words…
maybe grammatical gender is different than natural gender…
Indeed.
good stuff… blomberg’s a good ‘un.