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Article published In: International Journal of Language and Culture
Vol. 3:1 (2016) ► pp.68–89

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Gender, shape, and sociality

How humans are special in Manambu

Published online: 5 August 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ijolc.3.1.04aik
Many languages of the world have genders, that is, grammatical agreement classes, based on such core semantic properties as animacy, sex and humanness, and also shape. In Manambu, a language of New Guinea, nouns are assigned genders according to the sex of a human referent, and to shape and size of any other referent. Men are assigned to the masculine, and women to the feminine gender. A long tube and a large house are masculine, and a round plate and a small house are feminine. Switching gender for humans has pejorative overtones: an unusually boisterous or bossy woman can be treated as masculine, and a squat fattish man who does not display fully masculine behaviour as feminine. Classifying humans by their shape and size implies downgrading them to the level of inanimates. Gender switch also reflects social stereotypes. Feminine gender is functionally unmarked for non-humans, but not for humans. The noun du, “man” can be used as a generic term for “human being.” Linguistic Gender of humans in Manambu unequivocally reflects Social Gender relations.
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