Gender neutral language in French: Difference between revisions

For example, « Nous prions les <u>étudiantes</u> et (les) <u>étudiants</u> de remettre leur copie à la personne responsable ». Some people don't enjoy the repetition,<ref name=":10">OMPI (2022): ''Guide de l’OMPI pour un langage inclusif en français''. Online at: https://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/women-and-ip/fr/docs/guidelines-inclusive-language.pdf (retrieved 12.12.2023).</ref> others consider that the doublets don't encompass all genders,<ref name=":4">Ménard, J.-S. (2021): ''Pour un français neutre et une inclusion des personnes non binaires : une entrevue avec Florence Ashley''. Longueuil: Cégep Édouard-Montpetit. Online at:https://www.cegepmontpetit.ca/static/uploaded/Files/Cegep/Centre%20de%20reference/Le%20francais%20saffiche/Une-entrevue-avec-Florence-Ashley.pdf (retrieved 12.12.2023).</ref> others again are unsure which form to mention first, since the order conveys information about the value the speaker gives to each item.<ref>Pascal, G./Boschard, Μ./Cornet, G./Croci, M./Stegmann, N. (2021): ''Les outils - la (re)féminisation. Langage inclusif''. Online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20231225213750/https://tube.switch.ch/videos/0xwYktNzRp, 00:50 (retrieved 12.12.2023).</ref>

While human collective nouns — such as ''l'auditoire'' ('the audience') or ''le public'' ('the public')— inherently carry the semantic feature [+human], their relationship to natural gender/''Sexus'' diverges from that of individual personal nouns. Unlike fixed-gender epicenes (e.g., ''la sentinelle'', 'the sentry'), where a specific individual referent does indeed posses a gender/''Sexus'' that the noun's morphology simply ignores (rendering the form ''Sexus''-independent), collective nouns denote a macro-entity. In formal semantics, a multitude functioning as a single constituent does not inherently possess a natural gender. Thus, in collective nouns, the semantic feature of ''Sexus'' is not merely omitted, but is rather structurally completely absent (∅). In this respect, human collective nouns operate similarly to inanimate objects (e.g., ''la chaise'', 'the chair'): they are assigned a grammatical gender/''Genus'', but the semantic category of natural gender/Sexus is inapplicable to them.

To accurately classify the grammatical strategies for making French more gender-inclusive or gender-neutral, it is therefore necessary to distinguish between

# ''Sexus''-applicable nouns

## Gender-specific nouns

### morphologically gendered nouns, where the noun gets its Sexus-specification through derivation from gender-marked agentive suffixes (compare ''acteur'' vs. ''actrice'')

### lexically gendered nouns (sœur, mari, fille)

This distinction yields a rigorous tripartite framework, comprising Sexus-dependent, Sexus-independent, and Sexus-inapplicable nouns, which underpins the morphological oppositions presented in the following tables.

 

 

 

The table below shows "naturally" gendered nouns (''Sexus'') on the left and "naturally" gender-neutral nouns (''Genus'', i. e. [[wikipedia:Grammatical_gender|grammatical gender]]) on the right.