CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE The Morphological Gender Assignment for English Personal Names A graduate project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts in Linguistics, General. By Mohammad H. Ali May 2019 i The graduate project of Mohammad H. Ali is approved: ______________________________ _____________________ Dr. Kenneth V. Luna Date ______________________________ ____________________ Dr. Christina G Scholten Date ______________________________ ____________________ Dr. David J Medeiros (chair) Date California State University, Northridge ii Table of Contents Signature Page ii Abstract iv Introduction 1 Grammatical gender and morphological productivity 7 Potential words 9 The degree of productivity 10 Phonological Constraints 11 Morphological constraints 12 Blocking 13 Survey Experiment 14 Method 14 Results 17 Conclusion 21 References 23 iii Abstract The Morphological Gender Assignment for English Personal Names By Mohammad H. Ali Master of Arts in Linguistics, General. The word formation process for English has been the center of much study. However, one area has received less attention than the rest, specifically the word formation process of English personal names. This paper seeks to investigate whether the English feminine personal names ending with “a” i.e. Amanda, Bertha, Hilda etc., are morphologically derived or not. There is evidence that suggests gender assignment for these names is not arbitrary nor a mere convention. Rather, gender assignment follows a predictable pattern in these cases. As one argument for this, in order to change a personal name like “Robert” from a masculine into a feminine, we would simply add “a” as suffix as in “Roberta”. This shift in the gender association seems to be the result of derivational morphology. By the same token, native speakers are expected to apply the same morpheme when presented by nonsense names such as “Amin” to “Amina”. Here, results iv from a survey study are presented which bear out this hypothesis with both native and foreign names, that latter of which are likely treated as nounce-names by subjects. Given these results, we can make the claim that -a is an English morpheme that assigns feminine gender. Further, some of the constraints on the application of -a are discussed. This study provides linguists with useful insights into some of the history behind the personal names in English, as well as shedding light on the phonological and morphological rules that govern them. Keywords: grammatical gender, masculine, feminine, morphological productivity v Introduction The five most popular US girls’ baby names in 2018 are Emma, Olivia, Ava, Isabella, and Sophia; as for boys, the names are James, Noah, Oliver, Lucas, and Mason1. At first glance, we don’t see anything out of the ordinary, yet after a closer look, we will see there is a clear distinction between the gender in these names (i.e. a native speaker takes it for granted that ‘Emma’ is a feminine name whereas ‘Mason’ is masculine). We take this distinction for granted, or as self-evident, and never consider how these names got their gender affiliation in the first place. Interestingly, aside from a few unisex names or ‘androgynous’ names in the list for the most popular names in 2018, there is no overlap between boys’ and girls’ names. The lack of overlap and the clear distinction can be attributed to social and linguistic factors; though we will address both, we will focus primarily on the latter. A study by Lieberson & Mikelson (2000) showed that even ‘androgynous’ names are becoming more associated with a particular gender, thus fueling the already existing distinction between genders. The results of the study showed that ‘androgynous’ names account only for less than 2% percent of all the names in the state of Illinois from 1916 to 1995. Over time, they seem to lose the unisex characteristic in favor of one gender over the other, and usually, they became feminine names such as Jodi and Casey. Lieberson & Mikelson (2000) explained this phenomenon as follows: “there are issues of contamination such that the advantaged have a greater incentive to avoid having their status confused with the disadvantaged. … There 1 is more to be lost for the advantaged and more to be gained by the disadvantaged when customary markers disappear.” In other words, for a long-time, women have suffered from gender inequality, whether in political participation, sex discrimination at work place and in employment, or even in education. This kind of inequality created a group of advantaged (men) and disadvantaged (women) people. Within this context, having a personal name which can be associated with the disadvantaged group will result in negative social implications for the name holder. In addition, historically, men are considered as carriers of the family’s legacy. Therefore, boys are often named after a relative making the name less susceptible to change, unlike girls’ names which can gain or lose popularity rapidly. For example, the name William is still popular as first name ranking 18th among the most popular names in 2018 (Babycenter, 2018), with the slight variant, Williams, being the 3rd as the most common last name in 2010 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2016). On the other hand, girls’ names are often chosen as part of a social trend. For example, the name Aria (which also was the name of a fictional character from the TV show Game of Thrones) had a sudden spike in popularity as it moved from # 353 in 2010 (a year before the TV show was premiered) to # 11 in 2018 (Babycenter, 2018). This notion of change further illustrates the differentiation between personal names and their associated gender. Another example is the name Jennifer. If we look at the Social Security Administration database for the name Jennifer, we will see the name ranked #26 among the most popular names in the US by 2000, just a year after the famous singer Jennifer Lopez launched her first album. However, in 2017 the name is ranked #310 (The United 2 States Social Security Administration, 2018). By contrast if we look the name Chris, we will see that the name ranked #392 in 2000 then ranked #347 in 2008, the year when the name Chris was most popular, and in 2017 it ranked #595. After further examination, we will see the sudden spike in the name popularity may have been influenced by the fact that 2008 is a year after the famous singer Chris Brown album debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200 chart. This supports the argument we stated earlier, that even though both male and female names’ popularity are susceptible to social trends, the female names tend to have a heaver influence from these trends. When it comes to linguistic features, several trends relating to the gender distinction are observable under analysis. First, boys’ names tend to be shorter than girls’ names. This claim can be supported by examining the top 20 names of most popular names in 2018 for both boys and girls, which are listed in Figure 1. We will find that seven of the top 20 names for girls have more than two syllables; while in the top 20 for boys, there are five (Babycenter, 2018)2. Furthermore, by the virtue of the first observation, we can say that girls’ names contain more orthographic vowels, as these often correspond to syllable count. In addition, vowels (both orthographic and in pronunciation) differ between the gendered names in terms of position, such that girl’s names have far more vowels in both initial and final position. These trends are illustrated in Figure 1. 3 Figure 1 This figure shows the ratio of vowel-to-consonant with respect to their position in the name, for both boys and girls. It is evident that girls’ names have a higher vowel-to- consonant ratio than boys’ names. Out of the top 20 girls’ names, 55% had a vowel as initial sound while for boys it was only 30%. Moreover, if we look at vowels in the final position, we will find that girls’ names have 80%, while boys’ names had only 10%. In addition, the list also shows that girls names are more likely to have a front vowel in general. Seven out the 20 girls’ names have the front vowel /i:/. While for boys’ names, there is more variation as the vowels tend to be lower and backer, as in Noah and Lucas. On a similar note, it seems girls’ names have preference for vowel ending. It is quite common for girls’ names to end in the [i] sound as in Avery and Emily. Nonetheless, that is not the only common ending, if we look back at the top 20 list, we will find that 11 out of the 20 girls’ names end with an unstressed syllable (the unstressed vowel schwa), that is represented as -a, which the primary focus of this study. 4 Though it is not clear what the cause is for these patterns, the notion of symbolism is one possibility. Ramachandran (2001) held an experiment where he asked the participants to name two different shapes either ‘kiki’ or ‘bouba’. The first shape was spiky, while the other one was curvy. The results were 95% of English-speaking adults matched 'bouba' to a curvy shaped object and 'kiki' for the spiky one. By the same token, perhaps there is a relation between the frequency of front vowels for feminine names and back vowels for masculine names, or it could be a form of contrast where certain sets of sounds are more common in masculine names and vice versa. While the notion of symbolism could be part of the explanation, this is not fully satisfactory. It leaves much open for interpretation, and neglects a very important element, which is the language history.