Gender Shifts in the History of English (Studies in English Language)

Cover......Page 1
Half-title......Page 3
Series-title......Page 5
Title......Page 7
Copyright......Page 8
Dedication......Page 9
Contents......Page 11
Acknowledgments......Page 13
The study of gendered linguistic forms......Page 15
The context of language and gender research......Page 17
A gap in existing scholarship......Page 18
Approach of this book......Page 19
Organization of the book......Page 20
A note on terminology......Page 22
A note to the reader......Page 23
1.1 Introduction......Page 25
1.2 Definitions of linguistic gender......Page 27
1.3 Proposed models for the Modern English gender system......Page 33
1.4 A re-understanding of Modern English gender......Page 40
1.5 Conclusion......Page 43
2.1 Introduction......Page 45
2.2 Pre-scientific attempts to explain grammatical gender......Page 46
2.3 Framing of the gender shift in standard histories of English......Page 49
2.4 Morphological explanations for the loss of grammatical gender in English......Page 56
2.5 Sociolinguistic factors relevant to the history of gender in English......Page 60
2.6 The gender shift and the Middle English creole question......Page 62
2.7 A note on working with early English texts and new corpora......Page 68
Contemporary question......Page 72
Historical context......Page 73
3.2 Early agreement patterns and implications for the gender shift......Page 74
3.3 Early history of generic pronoun use......Page 84
3.4 Modern prescriptive efforts on the generic pronoun question......Page 87
3.5 Contemporary usage guidelines......Page 93
3.6 Conclusion......Page 95
Contemporary question......Page 97
Focus of this historical linguistic study......Page 98
4.2 Historical syntax and previous research on the gender shift......Page 99
4.3 Gender agreement patterns in Old English......Page 104
4.4 Gender agreement patterns in early Middle English......Page 120
4.5 Lexical diffusion of the gender shift in early Middle English......Page 128
4.6 Grammatical and discursive factors in the diffusion of the gender shift......Page 132
4.7 Dialectal spread of the gender shift in early Middle English......Page 136
4.8 Gender agreement patterns in later Middle English......Page 138
4.9 Conclusion......Page 145
Contemporary question......Page 147
Focus of this historical linguistic study......Page 148
5.2 Historical semantics and previous research on gendered nouns......Page 150
5.3 When boys could be girls......Page 155
5.4 Defining who can be women and girls......Page 165
5.5 Questions of symmetry......Page 170
5.6 ‘‘Man and wife”?......Page 172
5.7 Generic guy(s): the lessons of history......Page 186
5.8 Conclusion......Page 191
6 Implications for nonsexist language reform......Page 194
2. Effect of the Proposition if Adopted......Page 196
Appendix 1: Background on early English personal pronouns......Page 203
Old English......Page 209
Methodology for the corpus-based studies in Chapters Three and Four......Page 211
References......Page 218
Index......Page 232