Date: 18-Mar-2008
From: Mark Jones <markjjones hotmail.com>
Subject: Phonological Differences and Biological Gender
 E-mail this message to a friend
Dear Linguists
It's clear that male and female speech differs for a variety of reasons.
Some of these reasons can be attributed to biological sex factors like the
size of the vocal folds and the size and proportion of the parts of the
vocal tract, though the consequences of these naturally-occurring
differences may be enhanced through learnt sociolinguistic behaviour
patterns. In addition, there are more obviously learnt socioindexical
differences reflected in language-specific patterns of fine-grained
phonetic detail. It's also apparent that, in some languages at least, males
and females might show different conversational behaviours and stylistic
devices, even to the extent of different lexical items and morphological
forms in e.g. Japanese.
This query though is about robust and categorical sex differences in the
selection of phonemes/constrasts/segments within identical lexical items.
For example, in an entirely fictitious case, males may say /takwa/ and
females may say /tapa/ in the same word meaning 'obvious sex-based
phonological difference'.
I was wondering what examples there were of this phenomenon in different
languages and what references were available on this topic, with regard to
both synchronic patterns and diachronic developments. I will post a summary
of responses.
Many thanks
Mark J. Jones
British Academy Post-doctoral Research Fellow
Department of Linguistics
University of Cambridge
http://www.ling.cam.ac.uk/people/mark/
Linguistic Field(s):
Phonology
Sociolinguistics
This Year the LINGUIST List hopes to raise $60,000. This money will go to help keep
the List running by supporting all of our Student Editors for the coming year.
See below for donation instructions, and don't forget to check out our Fund Drive
2008 LINGUIST List Circus and join us on our many shows!
http://linguistlist.org/fund-drive/2008/
There are many ways to donate to LINGUIST!
You can donate right now using our secure credit card form at
https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm
Alternatively you can also pledge right now and pay later. To do so, go to:
https://linguistlist.org/donation/pledge/pledge1.cfm
For all information on donating and pledging, including information on how to
donate by check, money order, or wire transfer, please visit:
http://linguistlist.org/donate.html
The LINGUIST List is under the umbrella of Eastern Michigan University and as such
can receive donations through the EMU Foundation, which is a registered 501(c)
Non Profit organization. Our Federal Tax number is 38-6005986. These donations
can be offset against your federal and sometimes your state tax return (U.S. tax
payers only). For more information visit the IRS Web-Site, or contact your
financial advisor.
Many companies also offer a gift matching program, such that they will match any
gift you make to a non-profit organization. Normally this entails your contacting
your human resources department and sending us a form that the EMU Foundation fills
in and returns to your employer. This is generally a simple administrative procedure
that doubles the value of your gift to LINGUIST, without costing you an extra penny.
Please take a moment to check if your company operates such a program.
Thank you very much for your support of LINGUIST!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
|
