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From: rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: net.nlang,net.women
Subject: Re: "Lei" (literally) she = you in Italian
Message-ID: <436@ptsfa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Jan-85 21:05:58 EST
Article-I.D.: ptsfa.436
Posted: Fri Jan 18 21:05:58 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 21-Jan-85 07:48:11 EST
References: <641@uwmacc.UUCP> <980@utastro.UUCP> <5242@duke.UUCP> <1672@sdcrdcf.UUCP>
Organization: Pacific Bell, San Francisco
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Xref: watmath net.nlang:2449 net.women:4161

> As I understand it, this is because Lei is serving as a pronoun for the
> noun "excelenzia" (Excellency) rather than for any egalitarian reason.
> Nor does it seem to have had much effect on enhancing the non-sexual
> chauvinism of Italian culture.
> 

In the Romance languages and many other European languages, grammatical
gender has a lesser impact than it does in English. In English, inanimate
objects (with a few exceptions like ships) are given gender; i.e. gender
in English is a semantic notion reflecting the actual (or imagined)
gender of the referent. In languages like Italian, gender is additionally
a grammatical category since words for all inanimate objects are categorized
as masculine or feminine. Note that it is the WORD, not the object,
that has the grammatical gender since synonyms for the same object
need not have the same grammatical gender. However, in these languages,
the concepts of grammatical gender and real-world gender are not separate
since almost all words refering to real-world males and females are
grammatical masculine and feminine, respectively.

In the case of Italian "Lei", the use of a GRAMMATICALLY feminine pronoun
is a reflection of the fact that it's antecendent is a grammatically
feminine noun, "excelenzia".
-- 


Rob Bernardo, Pacific Bell, San Francisco, California
{ihnp4,ucbvax,cbosgd,decwrl,amd70,fortune,zehntel}!dual!ptsfa!rob