Gender Shifts in the History of English [Paperback]

A groundbreaking study of gender in English from the Middle Ages to modern times.How and why did grammatical gender gradually disappear from English and get replaced by a system where the gender of nouns and the use of personal pronouns depend on the natural gender of the referent? How is this shift related to 'irregular agreement' (she for ships) and 'sexist' language use (generic he) in Modern English, and how is the language continuing to evolve in these respects? Anne Curzan's study, based on extensive corpus data, will make a major contribution by providing a historical perspective on these often controversial questions.How and why did grammatical gender gradually disappear from English and get replaced by a system where the gender of nouns and the use of personal pronouns depend on the natural gender of the referent? How is this shift related to 'irregular agreement' (she for ships) and 'sexist' language use (generic he) in Modern English, and how is the language continuing to evolve in these respects? Anne Curzan's study, based on extensive corpus data, will make a major contribution by providing a historical perspective on these often controversial questions.Based on extensive research, Anne Curzan's study makes a major contribution by providing historical perspective on controversial questions regarding the continuing evolution of gender definition. How and why did grammatical gender gradually disappear from English and get replaced by a system where the gender of nouns and the use of personal pronouns depend on the natural gender of the referent? How is this shift related to irregular agreement (she for ships) and sexist language use (generic he) in Modern English? Finally, how is the language continuing to evolve 0n these respects?Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Defining English gender; 2. The gender shift in histories of English; 3. A history of gender, people and pronouns: the story of generic he; 4. Third-person pronouns in the gender shift: whyl)