84 



ON THE CLASSIFICATION 



woman, whether she is to be regarded as endowed with, or 

 deficient in, reasoning power. 



The great difference which exists between gender-denoting 

 and gender-ignoring languages becomes manifest from the 

 manner in which gender is recognized. In gender-denoting 

 languages gender need not be always distinctly expressed, and 

 yet its presence is felt and pervades the whole grammatical 

 system. Grender-ignoring dialects may on the contrary 

 apparently possess special forms expressive of sex, and be 

 quite devoid of appreciating gender in a grammatical sense, 

 a possibility to which we have alluded previously. 131 



We distinguish in nature especially two sexes, a male and 

 a female ; but as there are objects, which cannot be properly 

 ascribed either to the one or to the other class, the existence 

 of a third or neuter class is sometimes deemed emergent. 

 Abstract languages recognize consequently either two or three 

 grammatical genders. 132 The introduction of gender into a 

 language is accompanied both by peculiar- advantages and 

 disadvantages. Its superiority lies in its requiring a higher 

 mental descemment, in its appealing to imagination ; its 

 defects rise from the difficulties which beset the faculty of 

 judgment. Whether a language admits two, or whether it 

 admits three genders, the difficulty is how to dispose of 

 inanimate objects and abstract thoughts. In the digeneous 

 system they must be enrolled either in the masculine or the 

 feminine class ; in the trigeneous system the freaks of imagi- 

 nation interfere with a strictly logical arrangement. But we 

 must bear in mind, that every classification, as was previously 

 mentioned, has its shortcomings, and not one is perfect. 



(131) E.g., in the Tahitian language the term tamaroa is used occasionally 

 for hoy and potii for girl ; in Yoruha a son is also called iwolle (originally 

 a digger, i.e., one, who digs the grave of his parent) and a daughter 

 isokim (i.e., mourner, heing the chief mourner at the death of a parent), 

 hut neither of those words is masculine or feminine ; they are all gender- 

 less. 



(132) See pages 71 and 74. 



