A Study of Genders of Nouns in French Language

Abstract

Aims: This paper aims to study system of French genders is unlike other languages, French only has two genders, masculine and feminine (no neuter). Gender is indicated in dictionaries by the abbreviations m. for masculine and f. for feminine. Very often we can recognize the gender of a noun by its ending (suffix). But to know the gender of nouns, it is best to always learn them with their articles. Grammatical gender occupies a special position in language acquisition French. While French speakers master the genre system early, learners of French as a foreign language have difficulty mastering it even at advanced levels. Native speakers of French not only demonstrate early mastery of the genre, but also an ability to assign gender to nouns that are unknown to them (to new names, assumed names, invented names etc.), which casts doubt on memorization as a way to learn the genre. Therefore the acquisition of gender seems to depend other ways.

Methodology and Approaches: This paper study is based on elaborations of the insights given that gives the way of understanding of two kinds of nouns of French language. In a gender system like that of French, the task of the speaker is to recognize and to partition the category of nouns into two. Thus the masculine gender or the feminine gender must be assigned to each noun and the chosen gender marked on the form of the words which are related to the noun, by the use of the masculine or feminine variant of determiners, adjectives and pronouns.

Outcome: This study aims first of all to provide (paragraph 1) a general excursus of the relationship between gender studies and French linguistics, considering that in France the differentialist approach has always been preferred to the approach to gender to which American analyzes have accustomed us. In this sense, the translation of gender into French already poses a problem, an indicator symptom of a different approach.

Conclusion: We would like to end with a general reflection, noting that a linguistic awareness going beyond the external and internal norms which sclerotize the structure of the language, should be accompanied, according to French intellectuals, by the denunciation of what the large institutions by naturalizing a certain aptitude for universalism. A similar denunciation of institutions and this dehistoricization leads Christian Vanderorpe (Vanderorpe, C. 1995) to speak of a true “linguistic fundamentalism”. However, Vanderorpe's critique does not consider the analysis of symbolic structures, as Bourdieu does, but sticks to his analysis of institutional discourse. In this sense, Vanderorpe aims for a change in mentality that would come through language; however we believe that, although language in general undoubtedly influences the cognitive aspect, “the belief that one can modify the cognitive substrates by a simple reorganization of language is an illusion”.