Artemij Keidan artemij.keidan@uniroma1.it
Corinne D'Antonio corinne.dantonio@uniroma1.it
This workshop aims at exploring the concept of grammatical gender across its historical, theoretical, and social dimensions. While gender inclusivity in public language is a highly relevant issue today in many languages and countries, the debate often lacks an in-depth theoretical analysis of how gender systems function, both generally and within specific Indo-European and non-Indo-European languages. This analysis should be based on some abstract and formal principles, free from political or ideological bias. The primary goal of the conference is to discuss the possibility of establishing such principles.
The exploration of grammatical gender will follow several lines of inquiry.
Cross-linguistic descriptions of grammatical gender systems: what can “exotic” gender systems teach us about this inflectional category?
Formal analysis of gender inclusion policies in public discourse, focusing on languages where gender is not grammaticalized.
Formal analysis of grammatical gender theorization in traditional grammars, such as Indian or Arabo-Persian traditions.
Theoretical analysis of gender as an inflectional category from the perspective of modern linguistics: what constitutes grammatical gender, and what does not? How do gender systems differ across typologically diverse languages (e.g., genders vs. nominal classes, semantically-based vs. arbitrary gender classes)? What are the formal distinctions within the same language, correlated with lexical categories (e.g., gender of nouns vs. adjectives vs. pronouns)?
The workshop will conclude with a roundtable discussion on gender inclusivity in Italian public language. The discussion’s outcomes will be summarized and published on a website for the general public, aiming to contribute to the public debate from a scientific, rather than political, standpoint.
The workshop welcomes specialists in theoretical linguistics, sociolinguists, historical linguists and historians of linguistics.
Presentations in English and Italian are admitted.
13–14 February 2025
Italian Institute of Oriental Studies, Sapienza University of Rome
Room T02, “Marco Polo” Building
C.ne Tiburtina 4, 00185, Roma, RM