Re: Inclusive Language, Hungarian

Harriet Whitehead (whitehea@WSUAIX.CSC.WSU.EDU)
Thu, 24 Nov 1994 09:53:29 -31802

In the Mountain Ok languages (Central Mt. area of New Guinea), there
seems to be no "it" pronoun, so "she" will get used for inanimate things.
For animals, if gender is not known or not at issue, "she" usually
designates big creatures, and "he" small ones.

Harriet Whitehead

On Tue, 22 Nov 1994, Adrian Tanner wrote:

> I defer to Pat Crowe that the Iroqouians are not be the linguistic
> feminists I have been mislead to believe. This leads me to ask anyone out
> there: is there a language in which female is the unmarked case? That is,
> where (1) gender, if known and/or relevant, is usually marked in speech,
> and (2) the form used to cover female is also used to cover cases where
> gender is unknown and/or irrelevant?
>
> Adrian Tanner
>