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INTRODUCTION
The major focus of this research is the
investigation of the contrast between the English
language and the Kurdish language in regard to
Grammatical Gender. In my research, I will include
the following, such as the aim, the purpose of the
research, research questions, the definition of some
terms, background of the literature that I have
read, and discuss the differences. The methodology
that I have used in my research, analyse the data
and use quantitive research method. Finally, the
results and the findings, and the conclusion of the
research.
AIMS:
The major focus of this research is the
investigation of the use of grammatical gender
between the English and the Kurdish languages. Which
one of the two languages does use more grammatical
gender than the other one?
THE PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH
The purpose of my research is to find out the use of
grammatical genders in both languages. I believe
different cultural backgrounds and different value
systems underlie the speakers’ linguistic
performance (Beal, 1994, p.56).
Here the variation between English and Kurdish
grammatical gender is very significant in this
research.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The variation between English and Kurdish
grammatical gender is very significant in this
research. In addition, I asked the following
questions to be answered.
What is grammar?
Grammar is a rule of a language which describes how
its words are made up to form sentences (Macquarie
University, 1997, p. 387).
What is grammatical gender?
Grammatical genders, are also called (noun classes),
they are classes of nouns which are reflected in the
behaviour of related words, every noun belongs to
one of the classes. For example, Indo-European
languages have 1-3 noun classes that are called
grammatical genders instead of noun classes.
Indo-European and other language families are
believed by its proponents to have human, animal and
object as grammatical genders. For example, in
Spanish, the word (hijo) (son) is masculine and
(hija) daughter is feminine. It is called (natural
gender) or logical gender (Encyclopaedia, 2005,
p.7).
What is gender?
Gender is “the grammar of some languages, certain
words and forms belonging to a specific gender. For
example, masculine and feminine in French;
masculine, feminine and neuter in German; common and
neuter in Dutch” (Macquarie University, 1997, p.
372).
“Gender is a grammatical term, and has no real
connection with sex. It was only just later that it
became used as a synonym for sex (Arnie, 2003-4,
p.4)
What is biological gender?
Biological gender refers to sex, such as male or
female (Harry, 2000, p.1).
What does masculine mean?
Masculine, is related with maleness (Harry, 2000,
p.3).
What are feminine genders?
Feminine is linked with femaleness. According to
Gershaw men are seen as having competence feature
while women are more expressive than men (Gershaw,
1995, p.1).
What is the effect of culture on masculine and
feminine?
I believe that culture is the main factor that has
an effect on masculine and feminine genders in any
language. For example, in German, nouns end in –ug
which corresponds to ing in English, are feminine,
and car brand names are masculine.
Words end in –lein and –chen, their meanings are
(smaller, younger) neuter.
Another example, the ancient Romans believed the Sun
is masculine and the Moon is feminine. French,
Spanish and Italian have the same idea in regard to
the Sun and the Moon. For example, the Spanish word
(luna) (moon). (Harry, 2000, p.4). But Germans
believe is vice versa about the Sun and the Moon
(Encyclopaedia, 2005, p-8).
I will talk about these variations in detail in the
background of literature.
The differences between the Kurdish and English
languages in terms of using grammatical gender and
which one of the two languages uses more grammatical
gender nouns than the other.
BACKGROUND OF LITERATURE
This literature under the name of Evolution of
Gender in Indo-European Languages is related to the
topic, that I will analyse on the light of my other
literature. Boroditsky and Schmidt tested 84 common
nouns in 14 Indo-European languages, plus English.
The nouns were chosen as the following, 20 words
artefacts, 22 words natural objects, 20 words
abstract ideas, and 22 words animals. (See appendix
1).
During the investigation of the research, I looked
at the data that the researcher had used, to make
sure was accurate and valid, but unfortunately, the
researcher of the literature, did not speak the
Kurdish language, so he used the following data and
identified them as an opposite grammatical gender
nouns and changed masculine to feminine and vice
versa by mistake. (See appendix 1).
1. Knife is a masculine noun in Kurdish, it is not a
feminine.
2. Pistol is masculine.
3. Hammer is a masculine noun in Kurdish but the
researcher, even did not mention it at all.
4. Key is a masculine.
5. Hat is a masculine noun and usually men wear
them.
6. Gold is a feminine in Kurdish and it is not
masculine.
7. Lion is a masculine noun in Kurdish but the
researcher did not mention it
8. Fox is a feminine.
The researchers (Boroditsky and Schmidt)
investigated whether “the grammatical genders do in
part reflect the properties of their referents”
(Boroditsky and Schmidt, 2000, p.2) cited in Harry,
2000, p.1). Their comparison of genders between
Spanish and German produced a correlation
coefficient of r = 0.21, p< 0.05. They termed this
an “appreciable agreement”. But Harry the researcher
and author of this literature criticised this
correlation and says this figure, a value of r = 021
indicates disagreement rather than appreciable
agreement. The two languages are agreed more on the
genders of animals (r = 039, p< 0.1), than on the
genders of artefacts which is (r = 010, p < .035)”
(Harry, 2000, p.2).
The results of their study suggested the closer
languages are in the family tree, the more they
agree on gender nouns the more grammatical gender
nouns are used. For example, Portuguese and Spanish
languages show a coefficient of determination r2 =
.075 (Harry, 2000, p.2).
(R2): (“a measure of how well the independent
variable in a simple linear regression can explain
changes in the dependent variable, its value is
between zero (0) meaning poor fit and (1) meaning
perfect fit”) Clark, 1985, p.452).
English and Kurdish for example have a very low
correlation because it is not from the same sub
family and in addition the English language is
monolingual language.
Monolingual means “able to speak only one language
and written in one language only”. Whereas the
Persian language and the Afghani (Dari/Pshtu)
languages come from the same sub family, which means
the correlation is much higher, than the correlation
between the English and the Kurdish language. The
more similar the languages, the higher the
correlation. The more distant the languages the
lower the correlation.
English native speakers thought the gender of nouns
shows a correspondence with the task of gender in
other Indo-European languages. In order to test the
prediction the researches asked 20 native Americans
of English speakers, (10 males and 10 females), to
assign a gender either masculine or feminine. The
result suggests consistency among them. Especially
for words that have a natural relation with maleness
and power, for example, hammer, boulder, attack and
war, or with femaleness and beauty, for example,
flower, happiness, love and butterfly. The average
assignments of genders by English speakers form a
15th population. It was compared to the 14 studied
languages to determine the degree of correlation.
Look at appendix (2). The table shows the values of
r2 for each case (Harry, 2000, p.3-4).
The investigation suggested that the opinion of the
native English speakers on gender was very weak
correlation with each of the 14 languages, except
Kurdish, which can attribute to statistical error.
(Harry, 2000, p.3)
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