A Basic Course in Anthropological Linguistics (Studies in Linguistic ...

78 A BASIC COURSE IN ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS
Masculine Plural Forms Feminine Plural Forms
i turisti = all tourists, males
and females
gli amici = all friends, males
and females
i bambini = all children, males
and females
gli studenti = all students, males
and females
le turiste = female tourists
le amiche = female friends
le bambine = female children
le studentesse = female students
The gender system of a language is said to be marked insofar as it requires
male human beings to be named with the masculine gender, and female human
beings to be named with the feminine gender. In this way the appropriate
morphemes allow speakers to refer to the biological sex of human referents.
For inanimate referents, the conventional view is that gender assignment is
unpredictable and therefore arbitrary. Markedness is irrelevant in this case.
For example, there appears to be no natural link between the grammatical
gender of a word like Italian casa (which is feminine) and its referent (“house”).
But do links between morphological form and meaning exist beyond marked
categories?
The linguist Ronald W. Langacker (1987,1999) has argued persuasively
that such links do indeed exist. For instance, Langacker notes that in English
nouns refer to things that have or do not have boundaries (edges, margins,
finite shape, etc.). For example, the noun leafrefers to something [bounded],
since leaves have edges, whereas the noun water refers to something that is
[non-bounded], since water does not have edges or definite shape. Now, it is
this difference in type of referent that influences the morphological treatment
of each noun. Because [bounded] referents can be counted, the noun leafhas
a corresponding plural form leaves, but water does not (unless the word is
used metaphorically as in the waters of Babylon). Moreover leafcan be preceded
by an indefinite article (a leafl, water cannot. Langacker has established linkages
of ths type throughout the grammar of English, suggesting that grammar and
reality are intertwined. This topic will be taken up in more detail in the final
chapter.