HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT 3

Further explanations, apart from what you presented

1. How does English differentiate gender morphologically? With what parts of

speech does this differentiation occur?
Old English and Middle English had numerous endings (inflections) to mark grammatical
genders (masculine, feminine, and neutral), but Modern English has dropped most of these
and currently differentiates gender on the basis of biological sexes in a handful of nouns and
pronouns only. These nouns include waiter/waitress, host/hostess, etc. Examples of gender-
differetiating pronouns are he/she; him/her. Actually they are very small in number. That is
the reason why it is safe to say grammatical gender does not exist in Modern English.
2. List the different names of animals that English uses to differentiate their
biological sexes! Why do those animals need to be sexually differentiated, but not
others?
Most of the lists in your answers are fine, but the answers to the question ‘why’ may be
insufficient. A number of animals, esp. the domesticated ones, apart from providing human
with food, need to produce offsprings, too. So the male and the female need to be
differentiated for breeding purposes. Also, the close relationship between human and those
domesticated animals may determine how the animals are referred to by human; and the
different names to call the young animals show human emotions as well. However, the sexes
of most other animals may not matter to people, so they don’t bother to give them different
names.
3. Even though those animals can be referred to by different names in accordance
to their biological sexes, one of those names is often used to refer to all of them
(i.e. one is used for generic reference), and that one particular name tends to be
sexually biased, e.g. dogs for all dogs, and a single dog can be referred to as
he/him, while cats are normally referred to as she/her. Ships, motherland, etc.
are also commonly regarded as feminine. Provide your own examples for these
observations, and explain why some are regarded as masculine while others can
be considered feminine!
Most of you provide acceptable answers. Gender stereotypes influences what you think of
certain sexes, and some stereotypes can be universal while others are culture-specific, e.g.
girls/women tend to be tender, gentle, sensitive, while men are supposed to be strong,
decisive, noisy, etc. Certain animals, objects, or entities, may share qualities or attributes with
human, or people want to personify them, or people use language metaphorically. Therefore,
some may be regarded as masculine while others as feminine; some are even regarded both as
masculine and feminine, depending on contexts or preferences, e.g. a country is normally
called Motherland, but it can be Fatherland, too. Mặt trận Tổ quốc Việt Nam is commonly
rendered in English as Vietnam Fatherland Front, not Motherland Front.
 4. How about names of occupation? Have you noticed similar phenomena? Give
examples, describe changes if there are any, and provide your explanations!
For thousands of years, certain occupations have been assumed by, or reserved for, only a
particular sex, sometimes naturally, but most often due to social norms, male chauvinism, or
the like. Over time, thanks to various social changes, particularly women emancipation, or
feminism, most jobs are now open to both sexes. Names of occupations therefore experience
changes as well.
e.g.: businessman / businesswomen => business people
air host/hostess, air steward/stewardess => flight attendant
midwife (women only) => obstetrician (both)
Policeman – policewoman => police officer

5. Paraphrasing

Explain all these ambiguities in detail!

a. Either the place where Dick finally made the decision is on the boat, or what Dick
finally decided was the boat (he may buy or refuse to buy the boat). The problem is
on – it can be a particle occuring together with the verb decide (decide on something),
which is a collocation; then something is the object of the whole verbal collocation
decide on, answering the question What; or it can be a preposition of place, which
makes on the boat an adverbial phrase of place, answering the question Where.
 b. The professor was appointed to a new position, and that is shocking.
The date (meeting) with the professor was shocking.
The appointment of someone by the professor was shocking.
The ambiguity results from the different meanings of appointment, and the possessive case.
The professor could be the agent (the volitional performer of the action denoted by the verb
appoint), or the theme (the entity affected by the action denoted by the verb appoint).
c. The design has both big squares and big cirles.
Or The design has big squares, and circles of unidentifialble sizes.
The problem is big can modify both nouns linked by and, or just one noun immediately
following it but not the other noun.
d. The sheepdog’s hair, which is too much, prevents it from eating.
Due to the sheepdog’ hair, we/someone cannot eat it.
We can’t be sure of the performer of the action eat.
e. The problem is invisible modifies what, the man, or the hair tonic? It could be the
man who is invisible, or the tonic which is invisible if one uses it on his/her hair.

f. The governor could be tough when he fights dirty streets (clears crimes on streets), or
The governor is corrupt when fighting crimes on streets.
g. He is not so good to the level that I can recommend him highly, or I cannot
recommend him for a position that is too high for him.
h. Terry loves his wife and I love her, too; we both love one and the same woman. Or He
loves his wife, and I love my wife (two different women).
i. Yesterday can indicate the time they said she would go, or the time she would go, i.e.
it can be part of the main clause, or part of the embedded clause.
j. Either There is no place for smoking, or There is one section where one can’t smoke.

6. Contrastive Linguistics
1. In French the tenses are changed in the word (comprendra/comprendront)
to mean more then one and in English do not change the verb to make it
plural.

 In French, verbs change their forms to show agreement with the

subject in terms of number (singular, plural) and person (1 st, 2nd, and
3rd); they change their forms to show tenses, too; and this is exactly
the same as English, not a difference.

2. In French the determiner (the) becomes plural when the noun becomes
plural, in English we do not have a pluralized form of the determiner
 (the).

 In French, the definite article has 3 allomorphs: la when occuring

with a feminine singular noun, le with masculine and neutral singular
nouns, and les with plural nouns. By contrast, English definite article
the is used with all nouns.

3. In French each word in the sentence is pluralized when the sentence

becomes plural, in English only select words are pluralized in order to
create a plural sentence. => totally wrong.

b. Japanese

1. In Japanese they use a marker to show the subject, in English we do not

use markers to show the subject.
2. In Japanese they use a marker to show the object, in English we do not
use markers to show the object.
3. In Japanese the noun precedes the verb, in English the verb precedes the
noun. Which noun?

There can be several nouns in a sentence, so the statement above is ambiguous;

we would not know which noun precedes the verb. Instead, you must use the
names of different parts of the sentence (their grammatical functions in the
sentence), not what they are (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.); that means you
must say the object precedes, or occurs before, the verb; or the verb is final in
Japanese sentence, i.e. the word order in Japanese is SOV, whereas English is
SVO.

c. Swahili

1. In Swahili the class marker is attached to the word, in English we use a

determiner in this space unattached to the word.
 2. In Swahili the nouns are not plural, the sentence is pluralized by the verb
(a- (he)/ wa- (they)). In English we pluralize the nouns (child/children,
cup/cups), not the verb.

Number is a category related to nouns in all languages. Verbs in English,

and in fact many parts of speech in Modern English, do not change their
forms so much as they used to be in Old or Middle English. It is wrong to
say we pluralize the nouns, but not pluralize the verbs.

3. In Swahili the verb tenses of past and present are changed in the middle
of the word, in English we change the word form or attach -ed or -ing to
the end of the verb.

Apart from the ending ed or –ing, English verbs also change their vowel,
or sometimes everything, to show tenses, too, e.g. come, came; buy,
bought; know, knew; go, went, etc.

d. Korean

1. Korean has subject markers, we do not use subject markers in English.

2. Korean has object markers, we do not use object markers in English.
3. In Korean the noun comes before the verb, in English the verb comes
before the noun. Which noun?

Similar to Japanese, Korean takes SOV structure, whereas English is

SVO.

4. In Korean a word is added on to the last word of the sentence in order to

tell that the sentence is a question, in English we use a symbol (a question
mark) to show this.

Wrong. In English, you need not only a question mark. The usual way is
 you change the word order (the verb be, modal verbs put before the
subject), or insert an auxiliary before the subject to turn a declarative
into interrogative sentence. In speaking, you may leave everthing in a
declarative sentence there and merely raise your voice to indicate a
question. In writing, a question mark can be enough to make it a
question. In Korean, not a word, but the suffix –ninya/nika is attached to
the verb to make a question. The use of the western question mark (?) is
new in Korean, and is actually optional.

e. Tagalog

1. In Tagalog the verb comes before the subject, in English the subject
comes before the verb, i.e. VSO, while English is SVO.
2. Tagalog uses topic markers, there is not an equivalent in English => but
there is no equivalent in English. Yet it is more appropriate to say English
does not use a special topic marker; instead, the topic is marked by its
primary position, or by a sentence stress.
3. In Tagalog the adjective and the adverb come before the nounsubject,
in English the noun subject comes before the adjective and the adverb.

7. To the Vietnamese students (Non-Vietnamese students can try, too) : You are
given 5 Vietnamese words: bảo (tell), đến (come), sao (why), không (not), nó
(he/him/she/her/it). Make up meaningful sentences from these 5 words and
provide their English equivalents! What features of the Vietnamese language
allow you to make so many sentences?
You have only these 5 words to make sentences, i.e. you can add no more. Also, each
sentence must contain ALL these 5 words. There are possibly a hundred of meaningful
sentences, e.g.
a. Bảo nó sao không đến – Ask him/her why he/she didn’t come.
b. Nó bảo sao không đến – He/she asked why you/I/somebody didn’t come.
c. Nó bảo, sao không đến? – He/she told you to come, why didn’t you come?
Theoretically, 5! = 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 = 120 (this is a mathematical formula), but naturally
some may not make any sense, hence there could be around 100 possibilities. The reason is
Vietnamese words do not change their form at all, and they can assume different functions in
the sentence, so they can move flexibly, i.e. the word order can change easily.