From: miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Esperanto's embedded sexism
Date: 16 Aug 92 08:07:11 CDT
Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services

In article <1992Aug16.002920.3039@memstvx1.memst.edu>, connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu writes:
> In article <1992Aug14.162847.42358@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:
>> In article <y8cHPB1w164w@jwt.UUCP>, bbs-hrick@jwt.UUCP (Rick Harrison) writes:
>> As for affixes, Esperanto 'patrino' no more means 'female father'
>> than English 'princess' means 'female prince.'  Female fathers and
>> female princes do not exist.  Notice further that if they did exist,
>> these words COULD NOT be used to refer to them; we would have to 
>> find new words or paraphrases.
> 
> True but irrelevant.  The point is that _patrino_, like (most? all?)
> nouns referring to females, is *formed* in exactly the way that a
> word for 'female father' would be.  

In the unlikely event of a need for such an expression, a speaker
would say _ina patro_ or _virina patro_.  Not irrelevant, since it
illustrates that the meaning of _patrino_ is simply 'mother.'

> Furthermore, since the supposed
> point of Esperanto word formation rules is that the meaning of a
> word is to be discovered by the less than fluent by picking it
> apart, an intermediate semantic representation 'female father' is
> in fact *expected*.  Only after this is rejected as nonsensical can
> someone encountering the word for the first time arrive at the
> correct 'mother'.

True enough, a learner might follow this procedure, as in the case of
comparable forms in natural languages.  Look, I'm not disputing that
Esperanto and many natural languages treat maleness as unmarked.  I'm
trying to show that this has nothing to do with meaning.  German
_Handschuh_ means 'glove' not 'hand-shoe.'  The only reason we are 
discussing this at all is the present climate vis-a-vis gender.
>  
>> If people insist on finding "meaning" in the historical accidents of
>> word-formation (technically known as the etymological fallacy), then
>> two things follow: (a) they are not talking about meaning in the 
>> usual sense (what speakers intend to convey and what hearers possibly
>> understand); and (b) all human languages will have to be rebuilt from
>> the ground up.
> 
> This point holds only for natural languages.  The new Esperantist is
> precisely supposed to find meaning in the -in- suffix, just as the
> learner of English is supposed to find meaning in -ing, -(e)s, etc.

This remark is self-contradictory; you say the point holds only for
natural languages (which I was about to pounce on), and then you add
the a learner of English might do the same thing.  Well, morphology
helps the language learner sometimes; sometimes it leads the learner
astray.  But--though you might not see it as a weighty matter--the 
"meaning" you speak of here cannot be Austinian meaning--what speakers
intend to convey and what hearers possibly understand.
> 
>>>>Esperanto should be able to surmount this; it HAS no excuse of 
>>>>"historical value" or even "habit" to explain it.  
>> 
>> Esperanto is not an a priori constructed language; it inherits the
>> histories of its sources.  It could not have been otherwise.
> 
> Come, come!  Not one of its sources derives 'mother' from 'father'
> via an affix.  That was Zamenhof's decision, and it certainly could
> have been otherwise.

You are correct; I shouldn't have implied that this particular case of
unmarked maleness was inherited.
>  
>>>>Zamenhof plainly 
>>>>thought that the father was basic and the mother a variant on him.  
>> 
>> The etymological fallacy: we can conclude nothing about what he
>> thought from his word-formations.
> 
> We certainly can conclude that he thought maleness was "basic" and
> femaleness somehow less basic, or a least less worthy of being taken
> seriously.

This is egregious.  This kind of conclusion is what I am trying to
argue against: that you can get meaning out of word-formation, natural
language or not.  Zamenhof surely saw himself as a progressive thinker
in his time and would have been shocked at this accusation.  He was 
following his models, in which generally maleness was morphologically
unmarked.  Similary in the case of natural languages, we cannot 
attribute ideologies to people on the basis of the grammars of their
languages.  

> Please do not think I am *blaming* him an any way.  His choices
> reflect the social attitudes of that age and many others, and few
> of us can rise above them.  But they show in his language...

There is much empirical evidence against the notion that grammar
reflects, as you suggest, social attitudes.  This is the crux of our
argument, and I ask you to simply look at the facts: a very sexist
culture can utilize a grammar in which maleness is not "treated as
basic" and vice versa.  (Note how recent this business is: it would 
never have occurred to Ibsen, for example, to want to change his 
grammar because he clearly perceived the plight of women.)

	- Ken Miner <miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>