مباني شناختي مقوله جنس در زبان فارسي

Cognitive Basis of Gender Category in Persian

Grammatical gender is basically a linguistic issue but how it is presented in language nowadays has turned out to be a cultural, social and even political problem. Old Persian had the original genders of masculine, feminine and neuter. In Middleʹ Persian, all genders had disappeared. Now it is said that modem Persian is a language without grammatical gender. However, because gender identification has its roots in human mind and cognition, it has opened its way into the Persian discourse in the form of idioms, proverbs, and some words and phrases and it has received interactive nude. Although this shift of category status does not implicate social equality of men and women in Iran, it can bring about a change in the type of knowledge and reasoning and induce more flexibility on the part of the speakers involved. It may also show how language can provide the speakers with the opportunity to express the logical status of the two sexes in society without putting any biased emphasis on either sex. The author argues that modem Persian is easily capable of doing this.