378: Remnants of Gender Dec 21, 2015

For things that can be separated into male or female, English speakers associate gendered pronouns. Nevertheless, 'it' is very commonly used to denote babies and animals. Some scholars believe that this is due to the restrictive qualities of our psychology, i.e. babies and animals don't fall under our mental distinctions of gender, while other scholars believe that it is due to the grammatical gender of animalistic words and words relating to procreation and families. In Old English for example, the word for 'animal', 'dēor' is neuter, and so are the words for child, and 'ćild' and 'pregnant woman', 'ćildiungƿīf' (ćildiungwīf).