Do all languages have redundant features?

[berndf]

Maybe männlich (masculine, male, manly) and weiblich (feminine, female, womanly) also have something do with it?

Of course. Männlich, weiblich, *kindlich that's how children call the genders. Grammarians say männlich, weiblich, sächlich. But that is too intellectual. If you want to understand the associations of our neolithic ancestors the way children think is probably more relevant than the way modern academics think.

 

[Hulalessar]

We have essentially the same problem because genders often do not agree in different languages. This might even add an additional difficulty because you tend to make mistakes induced by gender assignment in your own language.

Interesting.

What I think may be the case is that for a native speaker the gender of a word is an essential part of it and so having to remember the gender is a non-problem. In other words, gender (and the fact that gender may involve making articles and adjectives agree with nouns) is no more of a problem for children than, say, correctly assigning the definite or indefinite article. Do you think this is the case?

It would also be interesting to know at what age children stop making mistakes of gender, assuming, as seems likely to be the case, that they do make mistakes.

 

[berndf]

...gender (...) is no more of a problem for children than, say, correctly assigning the definite or indefinite article.

Learing gender and learning to assign the right article is one and the same thing.

It would also be interesting to know at what age children stop making mistakes of gender, assuming, as seems likely to be the case, that they do make mistakes.

One can't tell. It becomes evident only when they form entire sentences and by that time they usually don't make gender mistakes any more. If children in school age make gender mistakes it is normally a sign they have a different first language.

 

[Mishe]

Learing gender and learning to assign the right article is one and the same thing.One can't tell. It becomes evident only when they form entire sentences and by that time they usually don't make gender mistakes any more. If children in school age make gender mistakes it is normally a sign they have a different first language.

Gender is a part of a noun and children take it as such. They don't learn the world separately from its gender, like foreign language learners, but they learn it naturally together, by listening.

 

[Sepia]

Learing gender and learning to assign the right article is one and the same thing...

Not quite. In a language with only one grammatical gender and definite and undefinite articles it obviously is not the same thing ...

Leaarning to use definite and undefinite articles right is pretty easy if your native language also have them. Learning the right genders takes a lot more effort. Especially if the language does not have rules with which one can figure out most of them, like French does.

 

[berndf]

Not quite. In a language with only one grammatical gender and definite and undefinite articles it obviously is not the same thing ...

The question I answered was about children learning a language with gender and articles as their mother tongue.

 

[Hulalessar]

The question I answered was about children learning a language with gender and articles as their mother tongue.

Just for the record, what I meant, but perhaps did not make clear, was choosing between the definite and indefinite article, and not choosing the correct form of either.

 

[berndf]

Just for the record, what I meant, but perhaps did not make clear, was choosing between the definite and indefinite article, and not choosing the correct form of either.

Oh! I see. And I agree with you.

 

[Meyer Wolfsheim]

Learing gender and learning to assign the right article is one and the same thing.One can't tell. It becomes evident only when they form entire sentences and by that time they usually don't make gender mistakes any more. If children in school age make gender mistakes it is normally a sign they have a different first language.

What if a child is given a noun which they have never seen or heard before and is asked to give the correct gender in a language such as German where gender is mostly arbitrary (there is no exact way to find the gender of a word based on how it is spelt, unlike Spanish for the most part), would they still be able to guess the correct gender?

I am certain that German children do not know every single noun in the language and as a teenager in English, there are hundreds of thousands of nouns which I have never seen used or heard but have been given in bare form as part of a vocabulary building exercise of some sort.

My question is that if gender is truly part of the word, then how on earth would a German child know the gender of a noun that he/she were given but had never seen/heard before nor had any context (he/she simply sees the noun in its barest form, not in a sentence nor with any articles, adjectives, etc.). And this is a noun which is not compound either.

However, if the German child can indeed state without error the gender of any noun which they had no context of absolutely never then there would have to be some mechanism which does allow for the accurate prediction of gender.

 

[berndf]

What if a child is given a noun which they have never seen or heard before and is asked to give the correct gender in a language such as German where gender is mostly arbitrary (there is no exact way to find the gender of a word based on how it is spelt, unlike Spanish for the most part), would they still be able to guess the correct gender?

This case is quite constructed and rarely ever happens in real life except sometimes for loans or acronyms but there it hits also adults which results in fluctuating gender for such words.

Children learn words from context where the gender is clear. If parents or teachers teach a child a noun in isolation they will always say an article with it. This is done as a matter of course. The name of the noun is "das Buch" and not just "Buch", similar to English where the name of the verb is "to do" and not just "do".

 

[CapnPrep]

I am certain that German children do not know every single noun in the language and as a teenager in English, there are hundreds of thousands of nouns which I have never seen used or heard but have been given in bare form as part of a vocabulary building exercise of some sort.

How many hundreds of thousands of words, would you estimate?

My question is that if gender is truly part of the word, then how on earth would a German child know the gender of a noun that he/she were given but had never seen/heard before nor had any context (he/she simply sees the noun in its barest form, not in a sentence nor with any articles, adjectives, etc.). And this is a noun which is not compound either.

The gender is inherently associated with the noun, but is only systematically expressed through the choice of agreeing forms in context. So yes, you can set up an artificial situation where a child hears only isolated words, and he/she will fail to learn the genders. He/she will also fail to learn everything else about the language. So it's a good thing this situation is totally unrealistic.

This doesn't mean that parents have to explicitly teach their children every word with the article, as berndf described. After all, there are languages with genders but no articles, and those kids also manage to learn the right genders, just from listening to ordinary speech.

 

[berndf]

This doesn't mean that parents have to explicitly teach their children every word with the article, as berndf described. After all, there are languages with genders but no articles, and those kids also manage to learn the right genders, just from listening to ordinary speech.

I said if they teach a word in isolation. I didn't mean to imply this was a frequent case. The vast majority of words are learned in the context of sentences.

 

[Alxmrphi]

After all, there are languages with genders but no articles, and those kids also manage to learn the right genders, just from listening to ordinary speech.

What languages are these Capn?

 

[sokol]

What languages are these Capn?

That is easily answered; most Slavic languages, to begin with. (Which by the way mark gender very "redundantly" indeed - compared to Germanic languages, gender is marked probably in twice as many words per average sentence, to give a very rough guess.)

 

[Fred_C]

What if a child is given a noun which they have never seen or heard before and is asked to give the correct gender in a language such as German where gender is mostly arbitrary (there is no exact way to find the gender of a word based on how it is spelt, unlike Spanish for the most part),

This is completely wrong.
Gender is arbitrary only on the few monosyllabic suffixless words, that cannot be decomposed according to etymology.
Those words are not very numerous, there must be a few thousands of them, and they are the easiest words to know. (They are the words that mean simple things like "cat", dog, horse, book, case...)

I am certain that German children do not know every single noun in the language and as a teenager in English, there are hundreds of thousands of nouns which I have never seen used or heard.

This is not a problem. difficult words, words that you have never heard are NEVER impossible to decompose, they always have a suffix or a recognisable building pattern that makes their gender automatic, even if you do not know what the word means.

Contrarily to what you believe, the gender of the majority of the German nouns CAN be guessed, but the rules to do so are not easy to explain, (although they are built in the brains of the Germans), and they are rarely taught to English learners. in order to not frighten them.

I think that genders are as puzzling to an English speaker as the stress pattern is puzzling to a French speaker.
I have often (naively) wondered how it is possible for an English speaker to remember which syllable is stressed in every word they know, and often, in a word they do not know...

Contrarily to what I believed, the stress pattern of the majority of the English words CAN be guessed, but the rules to do so are not easy to explain, (although they are built in the brains of the English), and they are rarely taught to French learners, in order to not frighten them. (Which is silly, because not explaining something difficult does not make it easy, it makes it impossible, which is worse...)

 

[koniecswiata]

It should be remembered that in (most?) languages with genders, gender is grammatical not actual, whereas English which does not have various genders for nouns only expresses actual, real-life gender. Therefore, getting used to gender in other languages is often a stumbling block for native English speakers because they tend to think in terms of real life gender, and not grammatical gender. In fact, instead of saying "gender" we could even just classify nouns in languages, such as Spanish, French, German, Russian, Greek, etc... (languages with gender) in groupings refered to A, B, C. But, the term "gender" prevailed when the study and analysis of these languages got underway. Besides, these genders do connect to the pronouns used.

As an aside, the gender system is not completely arbitrary in German. For example, all words ending in -chen are neuter. So "Mädchen" (girl) is grammatically neuter, though no German really thinks of girls as being neuter--it's just the grammar.

 

[Meyer Wolfsheim]

This is completely wrong.
Gender is arbitrary only on the few monosyllabic suffixless words, that cannot be decomposed according to etymology.
Those words are not very numerous, there must be a few thousands of them, and they are the easiest words to know. (They are the words that mean simple things like "cat", dog, horse, book, case...)



This is not a problem. difficult words, words that you have never heard are NEVER impossible to decompose, they always have a suffix or a recognisable building pattern that makes their gender automatic, even if you do not know what the word means.

Contrarily to what you believe, the gender of the majority of the German nouns CAN be guessed, but the rules to do so are not easy to explain, (although they are built in the brains of the Germans), and they are rarely taught to English learners. in order to not frighten them.

I think that genders are as puzzling to an English speaker as the stress pattern is puzzling to a French speaker.
I have often (naively) wondered how it is possible for an English speaker to remember which syllable is stressed in every word they know, and often, in a word they do not know...

Contrarily to what I believed, the stress pattern of the majority of the English words CAN be guessed, but the rules to do so are not easy to explain, (although they are built in the brains of the English), and they are rarely taught to French learners, in order to not frighten them. (Which is silly, because not explaining something difficult does not make it easy, it makes it impossible, which is worse...)

This is what I was trying to get at. First of all, I get plenty of vocab words without any articles (just the straight up word) and many of them have roots which I do not know and often the teacher has to correct the stress pattern/pronounciation when we say them. And this is not just because of orthography either but that I simply never ever heard the word and recognized no roots of it.

Obviously, if this new noun had recognizable roots its gender would be easy to guess, but I am talking about a noun with a root unrecognizable. But if the German child can still correctly guess the gender, then yes gender assignment via noun is definitely not arbitrary. So please back up your claim with evidence by explaining the general rule for finding the gender of a German noun and its gender.

But it would make perfect sense that gender assignment in any language would not be arbitrary, because what on earth would the purpose be to randomly assign any noun a gender?

However of course, there are words in French which can change gender depending on what they mean. La chose versus le chose, etc. Often times the difference in gender creates a noun similar to the one of the opposite gender, thus it would seem the two would be linked. So another question is, does such a thing exist in other languages with gender? And, why do some words have no other form if you decide to change the gender, like la main means hand but le main doesn't mean anything to a frenchman. Shouldn't every noun be capable of switching gender to form a new meaning? Or what would be the rule for that?

 

[berndf]

This is what I was trying to get at. First of all, I get plenty of vocab words without any articles (just the straight up word)

This is a different situation than that of a small child learning its mother tongue.

Obviously, if this new noun had recognizable roots its gender would be easy to guess, but I am talking about a noun with a root unrecognizable. But if the German child can still correctly guess the gender, then yes gender assignment via noun is definitely not arbitrary.

For elementary words you have to learn the gender. For guessing the gender of complex words you look at the endings, not the roots. E.g. Umleitung is feminine because all words ending -ung are.

 

[Hulalessar]

I think that genders are as puzzling to an English speaker as the stress pattern is puzzling to a French speaker.
I have often (naively) wondered how it is possible for an English speaker to remember which syllable is stressed in every word they know, and often, in a word they do not know...

I think that makes my point admirably.

 

[nose_bleed]

. . .

Obviously, if this new noun had recognizable roots its gender would be easy to guess, but I am talking about a noun with a root unrecognizable. But if the German child can still correctly guess the gender, then yes gender assignment via noun is definitely not arbitrary. So please back up your claim with evidence by explaining the general rule for finding the gender of a German noun and its gender.

. . .

Yes, please post these rules ASAP as this is the most awful part of German for me!

I hope these "rules" that have been mentioned are not just "-'ung' is always feminine, -'chen' and -'lein' are always neuter," etc because I know those rules and they don't help me that much. I hope these "rules" comprise a new, amazing insight that I never before perceived.

As for how gender assignment can be arbitrary in a language--I believe that the current theory on gender in IE languages is that, in the PIE system, gender was assigned in accordance with their mythology system, which animistically personified animals/plants/actions/the world as male, female and neuter energies. Thus, the PIE gender system was like the noun classification system found in, for instance, Dyirbal (an Australian Aboriginal language; a rather famous book was written about its noun classification system) today. Formal gender, as is observed in IE languages today, is typologically rare accross language families.

The continued development and transformation of noun classification systems can be seen in the Slavic system, which has innovated an animacy distinction (Polish "Mam wspaniały zegar." vs "Mam wspaniałego psa.")

This is only one theory I've heard, but it makes sense to me.

 

[nose_bleed]

On the larger topic: I wholeheartely agree with those that say no language is more or less redundant than any other language.

All languages are able to communicate the range of human thought and emotion with the same precision and beauty. (Whether you judge this level of precision and beauty as high or low is a matter of personal choice.)

Also, I have to comment on the discussion of Chinese: all these post refer to Mandarin, the most phonologically innovative of the Chinese topolects. The end result of this phonological innovation has been the shrinking of their phoneme inventory and a set of incredibly strict phonotactic rules, which necessitates the bisyllabic nature of most modern Mandarin words to avoid ambiguity.

More conservative dialects, like Min and Cantonese, do not have such strict phonotactics, and thus do not have so many homophones--therefore, they do not have as many bisyllabic "compound" words as in Mandarin.

Vietnamese, although not genetically related to the Chinese languages, shares many of the same features-it is tonal, analytic, and isolating. Words in Vietnamese are for the most part truly monosyllabic, unlike in Mandarin. (Vietnamese has articles though . . . unfortunately )