Are verbs politically correct?
A corpus study of gender in Russian verbs
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v9i3.16650Keywords:
gender, corpus, Russian, verb, feminine, masculine, grammatical profileAbstract
In Russian, the past tense form of a verb contains a gender marker agreeing with the subject. This gives us a unique opportunity to explore the verbs’ distribution by gender, using the relation between forms with feminine and masculine endings as the basis for a fem:masc ratio. The present study shows that an average Russian verb in the Russian National Corpus has three masculine past tense forms for each feminine past tense form. This article explores verbs at the two extremes of the fem:masc scale: the top 100 primarily masculine verbs and the top 100 primarily feminine verbs. These groups of verbs provide a concrete basis for assessing cultural stereotypes associated with gender.
References
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Briton, N. J. and Hall, J. A. (1995) Beliefs about female and male nonverbal communication. Sex Roles 32(1–2): 79–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01544758
Corbett, G. (1982) Gender in Russian: an account of gender specification and its relationship to declension. Russian Linguistics 6(2): 197–232.
Dal’, V. I. (2009) Poslovicy i Pogovorki Russkogo Naroda [Proverbs of Russian People]. Moscow: Eksmo.
Demoskop Weekly (2009) Èlektronnaja versija bjulletenja Naselenie i obš?estvo. Institut demografii Gosudarstvennogo universiteta – Vysšej školy èkonomiki. Demoskop Weekly 369–70 (16–29 March). Retrieved in October 2015 from http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2009/0399/anons.php.
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Doleschal, U. (1995) Referring to women. In R. Geiger (ed.) Reference in Multidisciplinary Perspective 277–98. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag.
Doleschal, U. (1997) O vzaimosvjazi grammati?eskoj kategorii roda i pola. In A. Xolod (ed.) Verbal’naja i neverba’naja interpretacija polovux xarakteristik, 134–55. Krivoj Rog: Meždunarodnyj Issledovatel’skij Centr ?elovek-Jazyk-Kul’tura-Ponimanie.
Doleschal, U. (2004) Genus als Grammatische und Textlinguistische Kategorie: Eine Kognitiv-Funtionalististisce Untersuchung des Russischen. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Eakins, B. W. and Eakins, R. G. (1978) Sex Differences in Human Communication. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (2003) Language and Gender. New York: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791147
Gries, S. T. and Stefanowitsch, A. (2004) Co-varying collexemes in the into-causative. In M. Achard and S. Kemmer (eds) Language, Culture, and Mind 225–36. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Hellinger, M. and Bußmann, H. (2001) Gender across languages: the linguistic representation of women and men. In M. Hellinger and H. Bußmann (eds) Gender Across Languages: The De/construction of Gender Roles through Language Variation and Change 1–25. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/impact.9.05hel
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Kirilina, A. (2002) Manifestacija gendernyx stereotipov v rossijskoj presse: žurnalistskaja i ?itatel’skaja perspektivy [Manifecstation of gender stereotypes in Russian media: jounalist’s and reader’s perspectives]. Wiener Slawisticher Almanach, Sonderband 55: 121–34.
Koval, V. (1995) Women and Work in Russia. In V. Koval (ed.) Women in Contemporary Russia 17–33. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Krongauz, M. A. (1996) Sexus, ili problema pola v russkom jazyke. In A. A. Gippius, T. M. Nikolaeva and V.N. Toporov (eds) Rusistika: Slavistika 510–25. Moscow: Indrik.
Lakoff, G. (1993) The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought 202–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173865.013
Lakoff, R. (1973) Language and woman’s place. Language in Society 2: 45–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500000051
Lakoff, R. (2004) Language and Woman's Place: Text and Commentaries (ed. M. Bucholtz). New York: Oxford University Press.
Lehe?ková, H. (2003) Slavonic versus Finno-Ugric languages: on missing categories in grammar and cognition. Glossos 4 (Summer). Retrieved in October 2015 from https://slaviccenters.duke.edu/uploads/media_items/4leheckova.original.pdf.
Levin, E. (1991) Childbirth in pre-Petrine Russia: canon law and popular traditions. In B. E. Clements, B. A. Engel and C. D. Worobec (eds) Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation 44–59. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Lyaševskaya, O. and Sharov S. (2010) ?astotnyj Slovar’ Sovremennogo Russkogo Jazyka (na Materiale Nacional’nogo Korpusa Russkogo Jazyka) [Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary Russian Based on the RNC Data]. Moscow: Azbukovnik.
Martynyuk, A. (1991a) Social relations and sex stereotyping in language. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 26: 93–102.
Martynyuk, A. (1991b) A contrastive study of male and female occupational terms in English and Russian. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 26: 103–10.
Mills, M. (1999) Background and introduction. In M. Mills (ed.) Slavic Gender Linguistics vii–xviii. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.61.01mil
Nesset, T. (2001) How pervasive are sexist ideologies in grammar? In R. Dirven, B. Hawkins and E. Sandikcioglu (eds) Language and Ideology, Volume I: Theoretical Cognitive Approaches 197–226. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/cilt.204.08nes
Nilsen, A. P. (1977) Sexism as shown through the English vocabulary. In A. P. Nilsen, H. Bosmajan, J. L. Gershuny and J. P. Stanley (eds) Sexism and Language 27–42. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Özçal??kan, ?. and Goldin-Meadow S. (2010) Sex differences in language first appear in gesture. Developmental Science 13(5): 752–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00933.x
Peters, T. J. (ed.) (1996) Alcohol Misuse: a European Perspective. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Plotnikova, A. A. (1999) O simvolike svista [About the symbolism of whistling]. In S. M. Tolstaja (ed.) Mir zvu?aš?ij i mol?aš?ij: Semiotika zvuka i re?i v tradicionnoj kul’ture slavjan 295–304. Moscow: Indrik.
Rakhilina, E. (2007) Glagoly plavanija v russkom jazyke [Verbs of aqua-motion in Russian]. In T. Majsak and E. Raxilina (eds) Glagoly Dviženija v Vode: Leksi?eskaja Tipologija 267–85. Moscow: Indrik.
Rekers, G. A., Amaro-Plotkin, H. D. and Low, B. P. (1977) Sex-typed mannerisms in normal boys and girls as a function of sex and age. Child Development 48(1): 275–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1128910
Romaine, S. (1999) Communicating Gender. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Romaine, S. (2001) A corpus-based view of gender in British and American English. In M. Hellinger and H. Bußmann (eds) Gender Across Languages: The De/construction of Gender Roles Through Language Variation and Change vol. 1: 153–75. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/impact.9.12rom
Schmid, H.-J. (2003) Do women and men really live in different cultures? Evidence from the BNC. In A. Wilson, P. Rayson and T. McEnery (eds) Corpus Linguistics by the Lune: A Festschrift for Geoffrey Leech 185–221. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Schmid, S. (1998) Zur Bezeichnung weiblicher Personen im Russischen: Eine empirische Pilotstudie. Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 41: 239–62.
Slovic, P. (ed.) (2001) Smoking: Risk, Perception and Policy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Smith, P. (1985) Language, the Sexes and Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Stefanowitsch, A. and Gries, S. T. (2003) Collostructions: investigating the interaction between words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8(2): 209–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.8.2.03ste
Stefanowitsch, A. and Gries, S. T. (2005) Covarying collexemes. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1(1): 1–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/cllt.2005.1.1.1
Tafel, K. (1997) Die Frau im Spiegel der Russichen Sprache. Wiesbaden: Harrassowittz.
Tannen, D. (1990) You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: Ballantine.
Weatherall, A. (2002) Gender, Language and Discourse. New York: Routledge.
Worobec, C. D. (2001) Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.
Yokoyama, O. (1986) Lexical frequency and its implications: the case of contemporary edited Russian. Slavic and East European Journal 30(2): 147–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/307593
Yokoyama, O. (1999) Russian genderlects and referential expressions. Language in Society 28: 401–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404599003048
Zasorina, L. N. (ed.) (1977) ?astotnyj slovar' russkogo jazyka [Frequency Dictionary of Russian]. Moscow: Russkij jazyk.
Zemskaja, E. A., Kitajgorodskaja, M. A. and Rozanova, N. N. (1993) Osobennosti mužskoj i žensoj re?i. In Russkij jazyk v ego funkcionirovanii: Kommunikativno-pragmati?eskij aspect 90–136. Moscow: Nauka.
Apresjan, J. D. (1986) Dejksis v leksike i grammatike i naivnaja model’ mira [Deixis in lexicon and grammar and the naive model of the world]. Semiotika i Informatika 28: 5–33.
Briton, N. J. and Hall, J. A. (1995) Beliefs about female and male nonverbal communication. Sex Roles 32(1–2): 79–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01544758
Corbett, G. (1982) Gender in Russian: an account of gender specification and its relationship to declension. Russian Linguistics 6(2): 197–232.
Dal’, V. I. (2009) Poslovicy i Pogovorki Russkogo Naroda [Proverbs of Russian People]. Moscow: Eksmo.
Demoskop Weekly (2009) Èlektronnaja versija bjulletenja Naselenie i obš?estvo. Institut demografii Gosudarstvennogo universiteta – Vysšej školy èkonomiki. Demoskop Weekly 369–70 (16–29 March). Retrieved in October 2015 from http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2009/0399/anons.php.
Divjak, D. and Gries, S. T. (2006) Ways of trying in Russian: clustering behavioral profiles. Corpus Linguistics and Lingustic Theory 2(1): 23–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/cllt.2006.002
Doleschal, U. (1995) Referring to women. In R. Geiger (ed.) Reference in Multidisciplinary Perspective 277–98. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag.
Doleschal, U. (1997) O vzaimosvjazi grammati?eskoj kategorii roda i pola. In A. Xolod (ed.) Verbal’naja i neverba’naja interpretacija polovux xarakteristik, 134–55. Krivoj Rog: Meždunarodnyj Issledovatel’skij Centr ?elovek-Jazyk-Kul’tura-Ponimanie.
Doleschal, U. (2004) Genus als Grammatische und Textlinguistische Kategorie: Eine Kognitiv-Funtionalististisce Untersuchung des Russischen. Munich: Lincom Europa.
Eakins, B. W. and Eakins, R. G. (1978) Sex Differences in Human Communication. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Eckert, P. and McConnell-Ginet, S. (2003) Language and Gender. New York: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511791147
Gries, S. T. and Stefanowitsch, A. (2004) Co-varying collexemes in the into-causative. In M. Achard and S. Kemmer (eds) Language, Culture, and Mind 225–36. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
Hellinger, M. and Bußmann, H. (2001) Gender across languages: the linguistic representation of women and men. In M. Hellinger and H. Bußmann (eds) Gender Across Languages: The De/construction of Gender Roles through Language Variation and Change 1–25. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/impact.9.05hel
Hewett, I. (2014) Why are there so few women in contemporary music? The Telegraph (15 February). Retrieved on 2 March 2014 from www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/10636940/Why-are-there-so-few-women-in-contemporary-music.html.
Janda, L. A. and Lyashevskaya, O. (2011) Grammatical profiles and the interaction of the lexicon with aspect, tense and mood in Russian. Cognitive Linguistics 22(4): 719–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/cogl.2011.027
Kirilina, A. (2002) Manifestacija gendernyx stereotipov v rossijskoj presse: žurnalistskaja i ?itatel’skaja perspektivy [Manifecstation of gender stereotypes in Russian media: jounalist’s and reader’s perspectives]. Wiener Slawisticher Almanach, Sonderband 55: 121–34.
Koval, V. (1995) Women and Work in Russia. In V. Koval (ed.) Women in Contemporary Russia 17–33. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Krongauz, M. A. (1996) Sexus, ili problema pola v russkom jazyke. In A. A. Gippius, T. M. Nikolaeva and V.N. Toporov (eds) Rusistika: Slavistika 510–25. Moscow: Indrik.
Lakoff, G. (1993) The contemporary theory of metaphor. In A. Ortony (ed.) Metaphor and Thought 202–51. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139173865.013
Lakoff, R. (1973) Language and woman’s place. Language in Society 2: 45–79. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500000051
Lakoff, R. (2004) Language and Woman's Place: Text and Commentaries (ed. M. Bucholtz). New York: Oxford University Press.
Lehe?ková, H. (2003) Slavonic versus Finno-Ugric languages: on missing categories in grammar and cognition. Glossos 4 (Summer). Retrieved in October 2015 from https://slaviccenters.duke.edu/uploads/media_items/4leheckova.original.pdf.
Levin, E. (1991) Childbirth in pre-Petrine Russia: canon law and popular traditions. In B. E. Clements, B. A. Engel and C. D. Worobec (eds) Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation 44–59. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Lyaševskaya, O. and Sharov S. (2010) ?astotnyj Slovar’ Sovremennogo Russkogo Jazyka (na Materiale Nacional’nogo Korpusa Russkogo Jazyka) [Frequency Dictionary of Contemporary Russian Based on the RNC Data]. Moscow: Azbukovnik.
Martynyuk, A. (1991a) Social relations and sex stereotyping in language. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 26: 93–102.
Martynyuk, A. (1991b) A contrastive study of male and female occupational terms in English and Russian. Papers and Studies in Contrastive Linguistics 26: 103–10.
Mills, M. (1999) Background and introduction. In M. Mills (ed.) Slavic Gender Linguistics vii–xviii. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/pbns.61.01mil
Nesset, T. (2001) How pervasive are sexist ideologies in grammar? In R. Dirven, B. Hawkins and E. Sandikcioglu (eds) Language and Ideology, Volume I: Theoretical Cognitive Approaches 197–226. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/cilt.204.08nes
Nilsen, A. P. (1977) Sexism as shown through the English vocabulary. In A. P. Nilsen, H. Bosmajan, J. L. Gershuny and J. P. Stanley (eds) Sexism and Language 27–42. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Özçal??kan, ?. and Goldin-Meadow S. (2010) Sex differences in language first appear in gesture. Developmental Science 13(5): 752–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00933.x
Peters, T. J. (ed.) (1996) Alcohol Misuse: a European Perspective. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers.
Plotnikova, A. A. (1999) O simvolike svista [About the symbolism of whistling]. In S. M. Tolstaja (ed.) Mir zvu?aš?ij i mol?aš?ij: Semiotika zvuka i re?i v tradicionnoj kul’ture slavjan 295–304. Moscow: Indrik.
Rakhilina, E. (2007) Glagoly plavanija v russkom jazyke [Verbs of aqua-motion in Russian]. In T. Majsak and E. Raxilina (eds) Glagoly Dviženija v Vode: Leksi?eskaja Tipologija 267–85. Moscow: Indrik.
Rekers, G. A., Amaro-Plotkin, H. D. and Low, B. P. (1977) Sex-typed mannerisms in normal boys and girls as a function of sex and age. Child Development 48(1): 275–8. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1128910
Romaine, S. (1999) Communicating Gender. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Romaine, S. (2001) A corpus-based view of gender in British and American English. In M. Hellinger and H. Bußmann (eds) Gender Across Languages: The De/construction of Gender Roles Through Language Variation and Change vol. 1: 153–75. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/impact.9.12rom
Schmid, H.-J. (2003) Do women and men really live in different cultures? Evidence from the BNC. In A. Wilson, P. Rayson and T. McEnery (eds) Corpus Linguistics by the Lune: A Festschrift for Geoffrey Leech 185–221. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Schmid, S. (1998) Zur Bezeichnung weiblicher Personen im Russischen: Eine empirische Pilotstudie. Wiener Slawistischer Almanach 41: 239–62.
Slovic, P. (ed.) (2001) Smoking: Risk, Perception and Policy. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Smith, P. (1985) Language, the Sexes and Society. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Stefanowitsch, A. and Gries, S. T. (2003) Collostructions: investigating the interaction between words and constructions. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 8(2): 209–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.8.2.03ste
Stefanowitsch, A. and Gries, S. T. (2005) Covarying collexemes. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1(1): 1–43. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/cllt.2005.1.1.1
Tafel, K. (1997) Die Frau im Spiegel der Russichen Sprache. Wiesbaden: Harrassowittz.
Tannen, D. (1990) You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York: Ballantine.
Weatherall, A. (2002) Gender, Language and Discourse. New York: Routledge.
Worobec, C. D. (2001) Possessed: Women, Witches, and Demons in Imperial Russia. DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press.
Yokoyama, O. (1986) Lexical frequency and its implications: the case of contemporary edited Russian. Slavic and East European Journal 30(2): 147–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/307593
Yokoyama, O. (1999) Russian genderlects and referential expressions. Language in Society 28: 401–29. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404599003048
Zasorina, L. N. (ed.) (1977) ?astotnyj slovar' russkogo jazyka [Frequency Dictionary of Russian]. Moscow: Russkij jazyk.
Zemskaja, E. A., Kitajgorodskaja, M. A. and Rozanova, N. N. (1993) Osobennosti mužskoj i žensoj re?i. In Russkij jazyk v ego funkcionirovanii: Kommunikativno-pragmati?eskij aspect 90–136. Moscow: Nauka.
Published
2015-12-01
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Kuznetsova, J. (2015). Are verbs politically correct? A corpus study of gender in Russian verbs. Gender and Language, 9(3), 391-434. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v9i3.16650
