Gender in English pronouns : myth and reality
This study deals with a feature of traditional English dialects in Southwest England and Newfoundland, namely the use of "gendered" pronouns (primarily he and him) to refer to inanimate objects such as a tree or a watch: "I can't climb him" or "He's a good watch&qu...
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| Format: | Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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2003
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| Online Access: | https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/data/1412 https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:25-opus-14124 https://freidok.uni-freiburg.de/dnb/download/1412 |
| Summary: | This study deals with a feature of traditional English dialects in Southwest England and Newfoundland, namely the use of "gendered" pronouns (primarily he and him) to refer to inanimate objects such as a tree or a watch: "I can't climb him" or "He's a good watch". Background analyses include an overview of the history of gender in English as well as sketches of the investigated dialects. The core of the study contains detailed analyses of material from the Survey of English Dialects (both the Basic and the Incidental Material) as well as examples of use and changes in use from various corpora of spoken language (parts of the Freiburg English Dialect Corpus for Southwest England, material from the MUNFLA archives for Newfoundland). Die Studie untersucht ein Merkmal der traditionelle Dialekte Südwestenglands und Neufundlands, nämlich den Gebrauch von genusmarkierten Personalpronomen in Bezug auf unbelebte Referenten wie "Baum" oder "Uhr": "I can't climb him" or "He's a good watch". Hintergrundanalysen zeigen die Geschichte des Genussystems im Englischen auf und bieten Kurzdarstellungen der untersuchten Dialekte. Im Zentrum der Studie stehen detaillierte Korpusanalysen von Material aus dem Survey of English Dialects (Basic und Incidental Material) sowie unterschiedlichen Korpora gesprochener Sprache aus Südwestengland (Teile des Freiburg English Dialect Korpus) und Neufundland (Material aus dem Archiv MUNFLA). Unersucht werden Gebrauchsweisen der Formen sowie Veränderungen im System. |
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