male/female grammar

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 9:57 am

The London-Lund corpus reveals that British females tend to position adverbial clauses in clause-final position and British males have a tendency to place them in initial position.

Why should that be? If anyone has any information on the above "phenomenon", could you please let me have it?

Also, have you noticed any differences in the way males and females use grammar in your variant?

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 11:44 am

I would like to know:
what is linking the sentences together whether adverbials are acting as linkers or whether other linking words are used where the adverbial is final also are adverbials both initial and final in the same sentence also whether the corpus is native speaker or general. Without these pieces of information, this is almost meaningless.

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 11:51 am

Andrew Patterson wrote:I would like to know:
what is linking the sentences together whether adverbials are acting as linkers or whether other linking words are used where the adverbial is final also are adverbials both initial and final in the same sentence also whether the corpus is native speaker or general. Without these pieces of information, this is almost meaningless.

I'll get back to you on that, Andrew.

Andrew Patterson · Post by **Andrew Patterson** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 9:11 pm

Have you been researching this question, Metal?

metal56 · Post by **metal56** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 5:06 am

Andrew Patterson wrote:Have you been researching this question, Metal?

No, sorry. I've been painting my new apartment. I'll get to this issue soon.

jotham · Post by **jotham** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 5:13 am

http://www.sff.net/people/alicia/questdialogue.htm
Scroll down to the fourth question — about 35-40% through the document.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 4:52 pm

Riley massively overgeneralises and stereotypes "male" and "female" speech, which is unsurprising considering she's a writer if popular, romantic fiction. I wouldn't consider that to be the best source of authentic, analyzable speech. What we need here is a corpus study, preferably peer reviewed.

JuanTwoThree · Post by **JuanTwoThree** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 6:27 pm

http://www.linguistik-online.de/1_00/KUNSMANN.HTM

At first glance this seems to be a good review, as of 2000, in its first part.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Fri Feb 16, 2007 9:43 pm

Interesting stuff, Juan. Since the article suggests that difference is speech often come down to status, it would be interesting to analyse language use differences between men and women but comparing societies where women are more emancipated with those where they aren't. It would also be worth looking at whether or not these changes have lessened over the years. If it does come down to status, it seems plausible that womens and mens' speech may be more similar in the under 30s than the over 60s, for example. Many of the teenagers I met in the FE college where I used to work swore readily enough, regardless of gender!