Őrsi, Tibor

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Eger Journal of English Studies XII (2012) 77 83Gender Assignment of Anglicisms in FrenchModern English does not distinguish the grammatical gender ofnouns. The French language has two grammatical genders:masculine and feminine. What happens to Anglicisms that enterFrench? In the process of borrowing, the so-Most Anglicisms including meeting,remake and show are assigned to the masculine gender. Anglicismsdenoting women become feminine: call-girl, suffragette. Wordscontaining suffixes that are feminine in French (efficience,inflation) as well as certain words that can be associated withfeminine referents also take the feminine gender. Pommefeminine in French. This explains why golden and granny, whichrefer to species of apple, become feminine in French. We comeacross inconsistencies and hesitations in daily usage. We also take ashort look at gender assignment of Anglicisms in ModernNorwegian.1. IntroductionMost languages of the world distinguish the category of grammatical gender.Genders divide nouns into formally and semantically motivated groups. Thenumber of classes depends on the criteria that serve as the basis of classification.In certain exotic languages, general semantic categories like plant, animal,edible, etc. may constitute genders, as in Mandarin Chinese.2. The role of grammatical genderIt constitutes the basis of pronominal reference. In French, for example, hommecan be replaced by the masculine personal pronoun il Femmefeminine (= f.) and can be referred to by the feminine personal pronoun elleGrammatical gender governs adjectival, pronominal and sometimes evenverbal agreement. In the French phrase cette table rondenoun table is feminine, which is why the attributive adjective rondthe feminine form ronde. The demonstrative adjective, which usually occurs in78post-nominal position in French, also becomes feminine (cette), in contrast withthe masculine forms ce, cet.By far the most important function of grammatical gender, however, is toassign nouns into various declension types. For example, in Latin, marewas neutral. In Old English, the gender of nouns was grammatical, not natural orwif (cild) wereneuter. Old English wifmannHunta tidwas feminine and treow3. MarkednessWhen languages are described, the morphologically simpler and more frequentform is treated as the base form within a category. The other forms are givenwith reference to the base form. Generally, the singular is considered asunmarked, and the plural is the marked form. In the French gender system,masculine is the unmarked form. The feminine form is considered as themorphological variety of the masculine: le prince la princesseesse to form themarked feminine form princesse.4. Is the assignment of grammatical gender predictable?In Language (1933: There seems to be no practicalcriterion by which the gender of a noun in German, French, or Latin could bedetermined By contrast, Tucker et al. (1977) quoted in Corbett (1991:57 61)prove that gender assignment is coherent in French. There are more exceptionsthan in other languages, but the rules form a clear system. The major rules arephonological. It does not suffice to focus only on the last phoneme of aparticular word; in some cases we must also take into account the penultimateand the antepenultimate phonemes. If we do so, the grammatical gender of anyFrench noun can be predicted with a hundred per cent accuracy.5. The change of grammatical gender within the history of a languageThe grammatical gender of certain words may change within the history of aparticular language. In Classical Latin, flos, floremFrench, fleur is feminine. Also in Classical Latin, arborperhaps because trees were associated with the ideas of maternity and fertility.Already in Old French and similarly in Modern French, arbre is assigned to themasculine class. In the 16th century, owing to the growing familiarity withClassical Latin, the original masculine gender was also used. This type ofhesitation, which only comes to an end in the 17th century, can be observed inthe case of other nouns as well. Modern French artGender Assignment of Anglicisms in French 79from Latin ars (f.) is frequently feminine. In the 16th and 17th centuries, words oflearned origin like and horreur are used either asmasculine or feminine, but both will take the feminine gender afterwards. Thedeverbal nounbut is finally fixed as masculine in gender.6. The change of grammatical gender in the process of borrowingBorrowing often leads to the change of the gender of the borrowed items.According to Hock (1991:the following parameters:1. Formal criteria;2. general semantic criteria;3. considerations of the gender of semantically related native words;4. to which words are assigned if none of the other criteriaLatin fenestra . The feminine gender ofthe Modern French word corresponds to that of the Latin etymon. But why isModern German Fenster It can be traced back to the sameLatin word. Among other words, Old Norse used the compound word vindaugagaining a better understanding, Id be in its ModernGerman form: *Windauge. It is an endocentric compound: der Winddas Auge is neuter,the whole compound takes the neuter gender: *das Windauge. In the meantime,the borrowed word Fenster ousted the *windauga form in German, the latter,however, continued to serve as a semantic model and determined the neutergender of Fenster. English window reflects the same compound; over time itssecond element has become opaque.7. Grammatical gender in the history of Indo-European languagesGrammatical gender is a major category of the Indo-European languages.Linguistic change affected these languages differently. Old English distinguishedthe three grammatical genders of nouns, adjectives and pronouns. By the end ofthe Middle English period (15th century), the noun abandoned the category ofgrammatical gender in favour of natural gender. In Modern English, grammaticaldistinctions of gender are mainly confined to the third-person singular (personal,reflexive and relative) pronouns.Following the collapse of the Latin three-gender system, in Romancelanguages such as French, nouns fall into two gender classes: masculine andfeminine. Anglicisms that enter other languages appear to conform to the rulesof the borrowing languages. To what grammatical gender are Anglicismsallotted in French? The rest of the present paper focuses on this issue.808. The proportion of feminine Anglicisms in the history of the FrenchlanguageData supplied by Nymannson (1995:96) indicate that the percentage of feminineAnglicisms is gradually decreasing in French. They represented 24.7% of all theAnglicisms borrowed in the 17th century, 16.1% in the 18th century, 14.6% in the19th century and, finally, they amounted to only 12.7% in the 20th century. Thesedata clearly show that words borrowed from English tend to be assigned to themasculine class. The masculine tendency can be explained by the neutralizationof the differences of the grammatical genders. Anglicisms were automaticallyinterpreted as masculine in French. As a result, their grammatical gender can, toa large extent, be predicted: le jazz, le jogging, un drink, un thriller, un avatar.Certain Anglicisms that refer to persons can be used both as masculine andfeminine words: coach, fan, free-lance, skinhead, snob, teenager.9. Factors influencing the feminization of Anglicisms9.1. Natural gender is preferred for persons.Anglicisms that refer to women usually take the feminine gender: la barmaid, labusiness woman, la call-girl, la first lady, la girl-friend, la girl-scout, lamajorette, la rock queen, la suffragette, la vamp, la working woman.9.2. Inanimate referents take the gender of an existing French word.Inanimate referents are usually allocated to the unmarked, that is, the masculinegender unless some special factor prevails: le copyright, le derby, le folklore.Such a factor can be what Humbley (1974:67) refers to as attractionhomonymique: An Anglicism may take the gender of a French word that hassimilar form and etymology. English check-list becomes feminine as anAnglicism in French since liste Dose, the morphological headof English overdose, is identical in form and meaning with the French worddose. The Anglicism overdose as well as its variety surdose, partially nativizedby means of a French prefix, are both feminine. The feminine gender ofscience-fiction agrees with that of the French word fiction9.3. Semantic analogy in generalCertain Anglicisms may become feminine if they can be associated with afeminine word in French. Les sixties , sinceis feminine in French. French dictionaries uniformly classify the Anglicismcountry music as a feminine word, since its morphological head musiccorresponds to the French feminine word musique. However, if country is usedelliptically to refer to the whole phrase, it can be both masculine and feminine.Gender Assignment of Anglicisms in French 81Golden, granny (smith) and starking denote various species of apple. Theybecome feminine on the analogy of the French feminine word pommeThe French word ale and lagertake the feminine gender.9.4. Semantic analogy in the case of compoundsCompounds of English origin may take the gender of the obvious Frenchequivalent of the last element of the Anglicism. The second element of theAnglicisms cover-story and detective story corresponds to the feminine wordhistoire in French, which is why the Anglicism is attributed to the feminine class.In spite of the fact that French speakers are aware of the foreignness of theseexpressions, there is a constraint to assign grammatical gender to them andintegrate them into the system of the French language. Fashion victim (1995) is afairly recent Anglicism in French. Victime, the corresponding French word with aslightly different spelling, accounts for the feminine gender of the Anglicism.9.5. Semantic analogy in the case of shortened formsAccepted shortenings may preserve the feminine gender, since they are used sideby side with the full forms: la sitcom < situational comedy larave < rave party, rave music partie musique9.6. Semantic and phonological analogyNymansson (1995:105) supposes that house ['aus] < house music ['ausmjuzik] isfeminine, possibly because for French speakers unfamiliar with English, thephonetic form of house and [uz] may appear similar. This preserves thefeminine gender. In French, the majority of words ending in the phoneme [v]belong to the feminine gender. The pronunciation of rave resembles that of. Nymansson is of the opinion that rave will remain feminine.9.7. Analogy motivated by suffixesOwing to the particularities of the development of the English and Frenchlanguages, a considerable number of words of the two languages are identical.Anglicisms may belong to this group as well. Suffixes spelt identically butpronounced differently obviously correspond to each other. In French, certainsuffixes are always feminine: ence/ ance, ion/ tion, ette. Whenever theEnglish word ends in a suffix that is feminine in French, the Anglicism willbecome feminine. The grammatical feminization of French performance ismotivated by the analogy of French words like alliance, correspondance andrenaissance. Efficience, modelled on English efficiency, a term used ineconomics, is feminine, since confidence, exigence, patience, science, etc. are82feminine in French. Some Anglicisms contain the French diminutive suffixette, which refers to the feminine form. It goes without saying that disquette andkitchenette are attributed to the feminine gender.10. Gender assignment in NorwegianThe following overview relies heavily on Graedler (2002). Historically,Norwegian has a three-gender system, with masculine, feminine and neutergenders. This is reflected in most of the traditional dialects and in the Nynorskvariety, whereas in the variety, masculine and feminine are regarded asone common gender. The neuter gender is treated separately. From the point ofview of gender assignment, the interesting question is when Anglicisms becomeneuter, in contrast to the common gender. In , the unmarked form is themasculine, and between eighty and ninety per cent of the borrowed nouns areassigned to this class. Gender assignment seems to be based mainly on semanticprinciples; for instance, animacy almost invariably results in masculine gender innew words: call girl, he-man, bitch, pitbull.Formal features also have an impact on gender assignment. In case ofconflict, semantic features seem to overrule the formal ones.1. Monosyllabic words tend to become neuter: kick, scoop, but look (m.).2. Endings:2.a. Some derivational endings are identical ( er, ing) or similar ( sjon,tion) in English and in Norwegian. Here analogy seems to be quite strong.Words with these endings take common gender: farmer, doping, audition.2.b. Words ending in ment are neuter in Norwegian. And that is also thegender favoured by most English loans: understatement (n.),agreement (n.) as well as loans from French: appartement (n.)Anglicisms with inanimate referents may take the same gender as the nativethe source of the analogy. In that case, Norwegian cover ought to be masculine.11. SummaryThe majority of the Anglicisms that enter French are assigned to the masculinegender. The number of feminine Anglicisms is gradually decreasing. Genderassignment varies in some cases: sex-shop, trade-union. Sometimes dictionariesprovide contradictory information. In most cases, semantic factors motivategender assignment, but in a number of cases we come across inconsistencies.Morpho-phonological factors influence gender assignment when Anglicisms endin certain suffixes. There seems to be no perfect hierarchy between theaforementioned criteria. The Anglicism holding tends to be masculine, similarlyto other Anglicisms ending in ing. Since it is a shortened form of holdingGender Assignment of Anglicisms in French 83company, it can be interpreted as companywhich are all feminine. This possible interpretation accounts for the occasionalallocation to the feminine gender.We also investigated gender assignment in Norwegian. We found that itfunctioned along remarkably similar lines.BibliographyBloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Corbett, Greville. 1991. Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Graedler, Anne-Line. 2002. Norwegian. In English in Europe, ed. Manfred81. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Hock, H. Henrich. 1991. Principles of Historical Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton deGruyter.Humbley, John. runt linguistique. Cahiers delexicologie 25, 46 70.Nymansson, Karin. 1995. Le genre grammatical des anglicismes contemporainsCahiers de lexicologie 66, 95 113.Tucker, G. Richard, Lambert, E. Wallace and Rigault, 1977. The FrenchGrammatical Gender: An Example of Rule-Governed Behavior. The Hague: Mouton.

Gender Assignment of Anglicisms in French

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Gender Assignment of Anglicisms in French

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