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239Z E S Z Y T Y  N A U K O W E   UNIWERSYTETU RZESZOWSKIEGO SERIA FILOLOGICZNA ZESZYT 47/2007           STUDIA ANGLICA RESOVIENSIA 4Małgorzata GÓRECKA-SMOLI￿SKA GENDER SHIFTS IN THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH BY ANNE CURZAN, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2003.  PP. 223. ISBN 0-521-82007-3In Gender Shifts in the History of English, Anne Curzan makes an attempt to analyse the reasons for, and complex processes influencing the change of the original  grammatical  gender  system  existing  in  the  English  language  into  a natural  gender  system. The  variety  of  texts  included in the Helsinki Corpusforms  the  basis  of  the  study,  however,  the  author  also  makes  reference  to numerous other sources. Moreover, Curzan's research includes knowledge of the fields of corpus linguistics, prototype theory, historical syntax, sociolinguistics and  feminist  theory.  Although  Curzan  addresses  a  very  complicated  subject matter, her volume is edifying not only to trained linguists and literary scholars but also to readers fascinated by gender and linguistic changes. At  the  very  beginning  of  the  book  Curzan  incorporates  Fodor's  (2003) explanation of the term gender stating gender exists if grammatical forms with variable gender (e.g. adjectives, pronouns, numerals) regularly adopt forms to agree with grammatical forms of invariable gender, usually nouns. Hence, the first chapter  aims  at  explaining  the  importance  of  grammatical  gender  in  the  Old English language leading to the masculine-feminine distinction not only among animate nouns but also inanimate ones. Thus, the classification of nouns under either of the categories, which was of vital importance in Old English, is beyond the understanding of Modern English speakers since inanimate objects are not used with anaphoric pronouns he or she. Furthermore, the author presents various approaches to the Modern English gender system, displaying the relation between the gender and the speakers' attitude, emotions and the social situation. Gender is viewed not as a system, on the contrary, it is seen as the kind of agreement that is variable  and  inconsistent.  Since  the  representation  of  masculine-feminine categories relies heavily on the speakers' attitude as well as the culture of a given society, then the term natural gender serves its duty as long as we account for it as referring to social concepts of sex and not only biological sex. 240The following two chapters are devoted to the discussion on the gender shift;  that  is  the  abandonment  of  grammatical  gender  in  place  of  natural gender. Furthermore, it is the dramatic linguistic change between Old English and Middle English that is focused on, namely the loss of inflectional endings as  well  as  the  influence  of  borrowings  upon  the  nature  of  the  English language.  The  author  does  not  fall  far  short  of  contradicting  pre-scientific attempts at explaining the notion of grammatical gender. On the one hand, they treat gender as the obligatory component of the language, on the other hand,  they  conclude  that  the  natural  gender  is  as  obvious  to  the  native speakers of English as the grammatical gender concord is to the speakers of the  German  language.  In  addition,  the  author  considers  the  sociolinguistic viewpoint  claiming  that  the  progress  of  language  continually  leads  to  the standardising of English. However, we must not forget about various dialect and  foreign  interferences  constantly  influencing  the  language  that  begin  to appear in the Middle English period and which are not treated as part of the huge  progress  of  English.  The  process  that  began  the  loss  of  inflectional endings,  the loss of grammatical gender and the influx of borrowed words raises the question of the Middle English Creole language, a language with incomplete  status,  instead  of  examining  how  contact  with  other  languages influenced the development of English.  Despite the fact that we can clearly state the loss of grammatical gender is due to internal development, there are numerous external reasons connected to the dramatic history of English and the British Isles themselves. The efforts to standardise the language allowed the abandonment of the grammatical gender and lead to the development of a language based on rational, natural gender. Both trained linguists and language observers praise the advantages of the loss of  the  grammatical  concord  making  the  language  more  pleasant  for  native speakers,  whereas  students  of  the  English  language  are  able  to  feel  more comfortable and confident in using English rather than any other language. The  aim  of  the  third  chapter  is  to  present  the  changes  in  the  English gender system, as well as the gender agreement between the animate nouns and anaphoric personal pronouns in the early English. In addition, the question of generic pronouns is raised. It is evident that the gender agreement for nouns and pronouns referring to people is more stable historically than for inanimate objects. Nonetheless, we can clearly observe that Old English is not strictly connected with the use of grammatical gender system. On the contrary, there is a strong tendency among nouns to use natural gender agreement in anaphoric pronouns. The study of generic pronouns reveals that both generic he and theyhave a long history in the language. The generic he appears as early as the Old English language for linguistic and social reasons. Although the generic theyis introduced in the same period it is often recognised as an error that needs to be paraphrased when in reference to singular nouns, a colloquialism used in 241the spoken language or the solution to pronoun problem optionally appearing in the written language. The fact of rejecting the singular generic they suggests a certain separation between the written and the spoken language. In  the  remainder  of  her  work,  the  author  examines  certain  historical syntactic changes influencing the diffusion of the natural gender, the change that begins very early in the language and whose consequences are observed in the  later  stages  of  the  language.  The  appearance  of  innovative  but  not necessarily natural gender is determined by various syntactic changes, namely reanalysis, extension, distance, lexical field consideration and the proximity of nouns semantically similar but gender varied in a given part of discourse. The presence  of  certain  nominal  suffixes,  especially  feminine  ones,  shows  a tendency to the use of natural gender agreement in the anaphoric pronouns. Furthermore, the study of the historical texts in the Helsinki Corpus implies that the extension of natural gender to inanimate nouns, taking place at the turn  of  the  Old  English  and  Middle  English  period,  corresponds  with  a strengthening  of  the  distinction  between  animate  and  inanimate  nouns. However,  the  gender  shift  is  not  only  due  to  grammatical  factors  but  also discursive ones including thematic prominence. In addition, Curzan's aim is to show the history of nouns referring to human beings and prove that it is as complex as that of anaphoric pronouns. Moreover, the author addresses gender and semantic pejoration especially of the terms for men and women. The study is based on feminist scholarship, providing evidence that the terms referring to females undergo pejoration more frequently than male referential  terms.  Another  argument  is  the  existence  of  a  larger  number  of derogatory terms for women than for men. Moreover, the process of sexualizing of words for women leads to negative connotations, semantic developments and extension to other groups defined by sexuality. However, it also leads to the use of  animal  metaphors  to  refer  to  females,  which  are  highly  sexualized  and derogatory  according  to  the  feminist  view.  Finally,  Curzan  presents  the implications of symmetry versus asymmetry in semantic change explaining that the variety of meanings of the words for children, women and men complicates the notion of symmetry in the lexicon since the masculine-feminine pairings are not stable or necessarily symmetric over time. Over all, the aim of the volume is not only to present the development of gender in the English language but also to give some implications about sexism in the history of the language. Heavy focus is placed on the language in the feminist movement since it is the tendency for the language to reflect social structures and attitudes, hence it is easier to change the language in contrast to attitudes. Despite the resistance to any kind of language reform, the feminist movement has made progress in introducing changes in the norms of accepted linguistic  behaviour  not  only  in  writing  but  also  in  speech.  As  the  author concludes one of the greatest successes of feminist language reform has been 242politicizing language choices, raising consciousness, and problematizing sexist form (Curzan 2003:188). Although language reforms attempt to hasten language change, social change still takes a pre-eminent role. On the whole, the work under review is characterised by eclecticism, for Curzan refers to a wide range of theories and schools. The author perceives language as a social instrument (Curzan 2003:184) and speakers of the language play a crucial part for the writer because, without them, language neither exists nor changes. These are the speakers who use their mother tongue every day in order  to  negotiate  certain  linguistic  choices  and  to  solve  the  problem  of ambiguity. 

Anne Curzan: Gender shifts in the history of English, Cambridge [u.a.], Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003, pp. 223, ISBN 0-521-82007-3.

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