2005-2006

News Release

REF NO.: 32

SUBJECT: PSA: Visiting lecturer to examine gender in English grammar

DATE: September 28, 2005

The Department of Linguistics at Memorial will host a lecture with Dr. Susanne Wagner, Freiburg University, Germany, on Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2005. The lecture, titled Gender in English Pronouns: Myth and Reality, will start at 3:30 p.m.in the Science Building, room SN-2101, on Memorial’s St. John’s campus.

Dr. Wagner's presentation will outline the principles underlying the assignment of grammatical gender in English and try to account for the mixture of systems that are responsible for assigning gender in present-day spoken English. Her particular focus will be on traditional Newfoundlandand West Country English dialects, where sentences of the type "I sot on he [chair]" and "She's [share price] up now" are by no means unusual.

Members of the general public are invited to attend.

- 30 -