GENDER IN LANGUAGE PROJECT

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GRAMMATICAL AND SOCIAL GENDER

The Modern Romance languages have two genders prescriptively, masculine and feminine. All nouns are assigned to one of these two genders, or they may be variably assigned to both genders if they refer to people (e.g. zio ‘uncle’, zia ‘aunt’), or are otherwise subject to sociolinguistic variation. In cisheteronormative contexts, it is most usual that the grammatical genders of words referring to people align with the presumed or known gender of the person referenced, except for the case of the generic masculine (described below). In other words, there is traditionally near-total correspondence between prescriptive grammatical genders and binary (social) gender in words for people, such that words referring to men are grammatically masculine and words referring to women are grammatically feminine. However, in addition to the generic masculine, there are a number of exceptions to this rule, including words referring to people that are just one gender prescriptively (e.g. la persona ‘person’). The grammatical genders of nouns referring to inanimate objects are not related to social gender, and are not included in the grammar below.

THE GENERIC MASCULINE

In the Modern Romance languages (including Italian), the masculine gender functions as the unmarked gender and is traditionally used in supposedly generic, unspecific, or neutral personal reference, as well as with specific reference to males. In contrast, the feminine gender is marked and is traditionally used with specific reference to women. This phenomenon is referred to as the generic masculine (also masculine generic):

This effect is more strongly observed in the plural, where collective nouns are based on masculine singular forms:

The feminine plural is traditionally used only when the group referenced is comprised of just women. The masculine plural is traditionally used for mixed-gender groups, as well as male-only groups:

To avoid the use of the generic masculine, feminists have proposed the use of both masculine and feminine forms together (e.g. ragazzi e ragazze), as well as the generic feminine (e.g. Ciao, ragazze!). Relatedly, while some women prefer the use of feminine or feminized occupational titles, others prefer to use traditionally masculine occupational titles (e.g. dottore instead of dottoressa, avvocato instead of avvocatessa). In this way, even in cisheteronormative settings, the usage of grammatical gender varies.

GENDER MORPHOLOGY

The prescriptive orthographic inventory of Italian features five vowels: a, e, i, o, and u. Extant proposals for gender-inclusive Italian include the use of this final vowel, u, though critics reference the pronunciation of word-final o as [u] in certain dialects, associating -u with the masculine gender. For this reason, activists have gravitated away from -u and have proposed the introduction of other vowel sounds (e.g. /ə/), which are proposed for use as gender-inclusive morphemes. Yet beyond canonical gender morphology, we must also contend with noncanonical gender morphology and morphology that is fully or partially invariant across genders:

Moreover, beyond inflectional and invariant gender morphology, there exist a subset of noun pairs whose minimal gender distinctions are not purely morphological. Instead, they have different roots. Some of these pairs have neutral alternatives already extant in the language (e.g. la persona), while others reveal possible lexical gaps that may be the targets of gender-inclusive innovation:

GENDER AGREEMENT

In languages with a system of nominal classification (also referred to as morphological or grammatical gender languages), including masculine-feminine languages, gender is imagined to be a property of the noun. Other grammatical categories are targets for gender agreement, meaning that must agree in gender with the noun in question. In Italian, almost all other grammatical categories must agree in gender and number with nouns they are dependent elements of:

'My parents are Italian immigrants.'

For this reason, while we have isolated words referring to people in the noun categories in the grammar below, other grammatical categories are included because they share the property of gender, by extension, and meaningfully bear upon the gender of the person or people referenced. Personal pronouns are a slightly exceptional case, as they can appear in sentences independent of any noun, so their status as an agreement target must be called into question, and we must concede that, in personal reference, the property of gender originates with the person or people referenced:

This document identifies all grammatical categories that distinguish social gender in Italian—i.e. everywhere that the grammatical gender of a given word aligns with the gender of the person referenced. Because Italian is a masculine-feminine gender language, gender is theorized to be a property of the noun. Only nouns referring to people are shown, as these are the nouns whose grammatical genders reflect the gender of the person referenced. Other grammatical categories included in this document are sites of grammatical gender agreement in Italian, except personal pronouns, which may themselves originate the property of gender in sentences lacking a noun (e.g. Lui è molto simpatico. 'He is very kind.') We display prescriptive masculine and feminine forms in both singular and plural numbers, as well as forms in the schwa gender, which has been proposed by multiple activists for the purpose of gender-inclusivity. This grammar does not include grammatical categories that do not distinguish social gender in Italian, like verbs. Attestations of inclusive forms are listed in References (below).

The schwa proposal is generally attributed to Luca Boschetto, creator of the website Italiano inclusivo. In the year 2015, they posted the first proposal for the use of the schwa as a gender-inclusive morpheme. Since then, Boschetto, the sociolinguist and activist Vera Gheno, the editorial house effequ, and many others have popularized and expanded on this proposal. There are now enough attestations of the schwa throughout Italian grammar to describe it as an additional gender, which we have done based on extant data. In the present day, the schwa gender is used on social media, including in promotional materials for Drag Race Italia, in queer and feminist circles, in the translation of nonbinary gender identities, as a translational equivalent to gender-inclusive forms in other languages (e.g. English they, Spanish and Portuguese -e), in language classrooms, and in real-world queer, trans, and nonbinary communities, who use it to self-identify.

Boschetto's (2015) original proposal introduces two canonical morphemes, inclusive singular -ə [ə] (lo schwa) and inclusive plural -ɜ [ɜ] (lo schwa lungo), and the personal pronoun ləi 'they [SG.]'. Boschetto chose the schwa for multiple reasons: it exists in the extant phonological inventory of Modern Italian (especially in different regional dialects), and it sits in the center of the vowel space, equidistant from all canonical gender morphemes in the language. The original proposal puts forth a set of principles for the schwa's usage. For instance, inclusive forms of noncanonical nouns are based on the masculine singular, and invariant forms undergo no transformation. Boschetto has proliferated this proposal on the website Italiano inclusivo. Other texts, like "Cos'è quella «e» rovesciata?" by Cavallo et. al (2021) and "L'avventura dello schwa" (2022) by Vera Gheno propose use of the schwa (ə) in both the singular and the plural, to the exclusion of the long schwa (ɜ). For this reason, multiple plural forms are listed in the grammar below.

Relatedly, the grammar below uses community-based proposals and attestations of gender-inclusive Italian to generate a picture of the schwa gender throughout the entire language. We extrapolated patterns found in this data, described more specifically in the sections below, and where no pattern could be extrapolated or where no consensus has been reached, we have left a dash (—) in the Inclusive column. 

A number of other gender-inclusive proposals for Italian have been attested, including the morphemes shown below:

The vowel u is associated with masculinity, as word-final o is pronounced [u] in certain dialects. For this reason, it is not among the most popular proposals for gender-inclusive Italian. The personal pronoun loi 'they [SG.]' was proposed by students at Colorado College under the supervision of Amanda Minervini in 2022. Because they propose the use of the asterisk along with the pronoun loi, we have not included loi in our description of the schwa gender.

OTHER RESOURCES

Italiano inclusivo

Video: "La sfida dello Schwa al maschile-femminile della lingua italiana"

Video: "Vera Gheno: “Lo schwa non è una parolaccia (e si può dire “medica”, “magistrata” e avvocata”)"

Video: "Luca Boschetto e la schwa: "La lingua cambia, è ineluttabile"

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