Epicenity

In linguistics

An epicene word has the same form for male and for female referents. In some cases, the term common gender is also used, but should not be confused with common or appellative as a contrary to proper (as in proper noun). In English, for example, the epicene (or common) nouns cousin and violinist can refer to a man or a woman, and so can the epicene (or common) pronoun one. The noun stewardess and the third-person singular pronoun she on the other hand are not epicene (or common).

In languages with grammatical gender, the term epicene can be used in two distinct situations:

• The same word can refer to either masculine or feminine signified concept, while retaining its own, either masculine or feminine, grammatical gender. For example, Classical Greek λαγώς (lagṓs) 'hare' is masculine, but can refer to male and female hares (he-hares and she-hares), and ἀλώπηξ (alṓpēks) 'fox' is feminine, but can refer to male and female foxes (he-foxes and she-foxes). For this meaning, the term common gender is different from epicene gender.
• An article, noun, adjective, or pronoun has identical masculine and feminine forms, but they do not follow always one agreement pattern.

In French

In the French language, the noun élève 'schoolchild' and the adjective espiègle 'mischievous' can be either masculine or feminine, but they are differentiated by the article:

The same can happen in French with the epicene elided singular articles (l'), the definite (les) and indefinite (des) plural articles, and the contractions aux (à + les) and des (de + les) when in contact with the noun, so the adjective takes the task of marking the gender:

For these meanings the term common is also used.

However, there can be cases where the agreement cannot force the disambiguation, even with the presence of pronoun, article, noun and adjective when they are all epicene:

This can be further complicated when dealing with spoken French (when some orthographical nuances are lost).

In Spanish

In the Spanish language, there are very few cases where a noun ignores the semantic gender of the referent. For example, the noun persona 'person' is grammatically feminine, and only takes any supporting article or adjective in agreement with this gender.

As the gender of the referent of an epicene is ambiguous it may be necessary to add an adjective to clarify, but the gender of this adjective will also be in agreement with the epicene, for example in the case of the noun víctima 'victim' which is also an epicene.

In Portuguese, the same happens, however the word sobrecomum () is often distinguished from epiceno when referring to nouns specifically. For example, the word cobra is considered epicene while the word criança (child) is sobrecomum, while words such as alface or rádio are considered of double gender or vacillant, something that is denominated ambiguous gender in Spanish, similar to the term unstable gender in French.

References

References

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