Rovers - He Or She? |
Rovers - He Or She? |
Jun 21 2005, 07:41 AM
Post
#1
|
|
Member Group: Members Posts: 877 Joined: 7-March 05 From: Switzerland Member No.: 186 |
I'm still confused about the gender of Spirit and Oppy! What the consent about? If Spirit female (so I think) then make it sense to keep quiet about her age and make she younger
No kidding! I would like to know which personal pronoun (she, her or he, his etc.) I have to use by Spirit's and Oppy's gender definitely? -------------------- |
|
|
Jun 22 2005, 07:31 AM
Post
#2
|
|
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1870 Joined: 20-February 05 Member No.: 174 |
Would it then be: Ms Opportunity and Ms Spirit?
<ducks and runs> |
|
|
Guest_Richard Trigaux_* |
Jun 22 2005, 08:33 AM
Post
#3
|
Guests |
|
|
|
Guest_Richard Trigaux_* |
Jun 22 2005, 08:48 AM
Post
#4
|
Guests |
QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jun 21 2005 @ 08:02 PM) Americans (and, to a lesser extent, the British) have embraced scientific rationalism to the extent that they've tried to distance the English language from such non-rational concepts as a female chair or a male shovel, and I'm sure that more Americans refer to Spirit or Opportunity as "it" than they do "him" or "her"... but there is still enough irrationality to our language that we can safely use feminine pronouns for the rovers. -the other Doug Seriously, I do not think it would be more "rational" to abandon the use of some of our poetical language tips. This may lead us to some scientistist fundamentalism, with no guaranties of better science results. Some among the greatest scientists were interested in poetry, peace, spirituality, etc... So I think there is no harm to have some pranks like this in a serious science forum. And some jest in very serious science reviews would make them more accessible to ordinary persons. |
|
|
Jun 22 2005, 05:33 PM
Post
#5
|
|
Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2530 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 321 |
QUOTE (Richard Trigaux @ Jun 22 2005, 01:48 AM) Seriously, I do not think it would be more "rational" to abandon the use of some of our poetical language tips. This may lead us to some scientistist fundamentalism, with no guaranties of better science results. Some among the greatest scientists were interested in poetry, peace, spirituality, etc... So I think there is no harm to have some pranks like this in a serious science forum. And some jest in very serious science reviews would make them more accessible to ordinary persons. I echo Richard's comment, but add this: I've been disturbed by some of the talk in this thread; gender in language is not irrational. It disambiguates items in certain sentences, allowing comprehensibility to take place with shorter sentences, and thus increasing signal/time. It also provides redundancy with no added content, assisting comprehension in the presence of noise. The purpose of pronouns in general is to "compress" messages, so you don't have to say, "I asked my stock broker and my stock broker said that my stock broker's car was available for use later if I ask my stock broker." Pronouns turn that four-syllable phrase into a one-syllable word, cutting nine syllables out of that 34-syllable sentence -- a nice reduction! When you get two pronouns in the same sentence, gender gives you a 50% chance that you can leave both as monosyllables without "expanding" either. If you have more noun classes (German, Latin, and the Slavic languages have three; some languages have more), the chances of a "gender collision" are even lower, so pronoun use (and brevity) can be maximized. This is human language utilizing one of the same principles used in file compression. How is that irrational? Gender in adjectives adds a bit or two of redundancy to a noun phrase to assist in comprehension. In fact, it often allows the noun to be dropped altogether, and then you again get a shorter message with the same comprehensibility. This is true whether or not the classification system has anything to do with biological gender. Most language families that have such systems do not tie them to biological gender, but the IndoEuropean languages usually do, and it's a rather brilliant solution to a problem: Since many of the nouns in human speech refer to people, and it is desirable to get the same disambiguation benefit you get with things, it's valuable to have people fall into different classes, and to have the split be as close as possible to 50-50. Ta da, gender. (You might ask if this mechanism is all so beneficial, why don't all languages have it? That's a question that runs across all the varied properties of different languages. They usually play trade-offs, and end up with a good solution, not necessarily an ideal one, and it turns out there are infinitely many good solutions, and if there is an ideal language design, it is either elusive or is negligibly better than the existing cases.) It bugs me when scientists and would-be scientists assume that their rational world view is complete, tidy, and that anything outside of it is wrong. Sometimes when such a person believes that a circumstance is like that, it's not the world that's wrong. None of this is pure silliness. It's damn fine engineering of an information-transmission scheme. It also happens to have aesthetic qualities. |
|
|
Lo-Fi Version | Time is now: 26th September 2024 - 06:53 PM |
RULES AND GUIDELINES Please read the Forum Rules and Guidelines before posting. IMAGE COPYRIGHT |
OPINIONS AND MODERATION Opinions expressed on UnmannedSpaceflight.com are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of UnmannedSpaceflight.com or The Planetary Society. The all-volunteer UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderation team is wholly independent of The Planetary Society. The Planetary Society has no influence over decisions made by the UnmannedSpaceflight.com moderators. |
SUPPORT THE FORUM Unmannedspaceflight.com is funded by the Planetary Society. Please consider supporting our work and many other projects by donating to the Society or becoming a member. |