The predominance of the masculine gender in Chinese: A study of two verbs denoting the act of marriage
La primauté du genre masculin en chinois : étude de deux verbes dénotant l’acte du mariage
Résumé
The Chinese language does not have gender inflections in its grammar. The linguistic arrangement of gender in Chinese differs from “gendered” languages, such as French. It is mainly organized at the level of the lexicon, in which the masculine gender largely dominates the feminine. The linguistic materiality of gender can also be seen at the syntactic level, particularly in verbs with specific predicative structures, such as the two verbs denoting the act of marriage analyzed in this article. The key idea in this study is that these verbs with strong connotations of gender have both lexical and syntactic characteristics that are based on and which are explained by traditional Confucian conceptions, more specifically on the inferiority of women in society compared to men and the restrictions on their life sphere within the family circle. Keywords: gender, Chinese, verbs, act of marriage.