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Gender neutral language in French: Difference between revisions
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=== Fixed-gender [[wikipedia:Epicenity|epicenes]] and [[wikipedia:Collective_noun|collective nouns]] === | === Fixed-gender [[wikipedia:Epicenity|epicenes]] and [[wikipedia:Collective_noun|collective nouns]] === | ||
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) | |||
these collective forms as '''Sexus-inapplicable'''. 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. | 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. | ||
{| class="wikitable" | {| class="wikitable" | ||