Pronunciation and Phonology: A Survey of Gendered Typology

Sara Trechter

English Department, CSU-Chico

Nearly thirty years ago Anne Bodine (1975) published "Sex Differentiation in Language": a brief survey of the salient but few phonological, lexical, and grammatical differences in male and female speech. Bodine cited 10 languages with pronunciation differences based on the gender of the speaker. Since that time, the focus of linguistics has shifted from generating a generative global grammar market to one that expresses a renewed interest in the raw materials of third world languages. This increased attention to little-known or endangered languages has in turn affected the documentation of gendered phonological differentiation. New fieldwork and reanalysis of old data has sometimes re-interpreted "exclusively" gendered languages (see Trechter 1999). While detailed ethnographic (or sociolinguistic) analysis is vital to any understanding of the semiotic construction of gendered meaning, typological surveys merely specify the range of gendered pronunciation and highlights data from lesser-known languages.
The current study is a typological survey. We examine and reinterpret the languages offered in both Bodine's study and more recent work along four basic parameters: 1) phonological processes, 2) innovation and conservatism, 3) language family, and 4) geographical region. The primary focus on consonant and syllabic shifts illustrates common phonological processes such as deletion, nasalization, and palatalization. The innovation/conservatism pattern indicates the extent to which women in more traditional societies are more phonologically conservative because of variable access to education and new economic resources. Language family traces the historical depth of a feature of gendered phonology and if (when possible) it is reconstructible to an earlier stage, and geographical region is the extent to which a feature may be areal or the result of spread.