LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 17:11 November 2017
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
         Renuga Devi, Ph.D.
         Soibam Rebika Devi, M.Sc., Ph.D.
         Dr. S. Chelliah, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Gender Reflection in Number Markers:
A Case of Hindi Disyllabic Words and their Gendered Behavior

Sweta Sinha, Ph.D.

Abstract

The concept of gender is much more complex than what it appears to be and when it is investigated through the lens of language the interrelationship appears to be both implicit as well as explicit. The present research is an attempt to reinstate the profound agreement between gender and number in Hindi (an Indo- Aryan) language with an aim to highlight the gendered behavior of numbers in this language. The investigational framework was based on three- hypotheses: (a) gender bias in Hindi being both implicit as well as explicit; (b) gender bias is observed in gender and number interaction and (c) nouns with (+ Male attribute) do not take on as many overt affixes as nouns with (+ Female attributes). Around fifty disyllabic words were chosen as part of the first phase of study in this area and they were categorized based on (+Male/ +Female), (+Human/ -Human) and (+Countable/ -Countable) attributes. Nouns with (-Human) attribute were further categorized on the basis of (+/- Animacy). Analysis of data not only established the validity of the hypotheses but it has also opened up new area of research where more studies can be carried out to investigate gender influenced morphological behavior in languages.

Keywords: Pluralization; Number Markers; Hindi; Gender and Language; Hindi Words; Disyllabic

Introduction

Sex is the biological characteristic of human and animals. Except for the hermaphrodites, all the living organisms (humans and animals) have distinct sexual classification of male and female. Non- living objects, therefore, are asexual. The concept of gender is much more complex than this because the culture has a lot of impact on gender assignment to almost all possible living/ non- living things under the sky. In languages with gender all nouns are categorized into either three groups (as in Sanskrit) or two (as in Hindi). The two genders that exist in all languages are “masculine” and “feminine”. The third gender is called “neuter”. In languages like English gender agreement is not manifested on verbs and adjectives but in Hindi the agreement is more profound. The present research is an attempt to reinstate the profound agreement between gender and number in Hindi with an aim to highlight the gendered behavior of numbers in this language.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Sweta Sinha, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Linguistics
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology Patna
Patna 801103
Bihar
India
apna1982@gmail.com

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