>Hmm... where do you make the cut off for "young" women? In my
>new England circle
>of female friends in the early 70s, "guys" was regularly used to refer to
>groups of mixed gender, or all female groups. What this indicates
>to me is a lack of a second person plural form; something like
>the "y'all" I hear down here in the south.
>
I was thinking of late teens to late twenties - my students, in fact :-) -
but I'm sure the usage is more widespread chronologically, and indeed
geographically, as Bill East's posting would also suggest (though in his
cited instance perhaps his presence in the group had, so to speak, a
masculinizing effect? - as it would in Italian, where the presence of one
male among no matter how many females is usually enough to get the group
addressed as, say, "ragazzi" rather than "ragazze". That would be an
interesting development of gendered usage in a basically
non-gender-inflected language like English).
But I have wandered so far from medieval religion as to have entered the
territory of George Ferzoco's other, equally splendid, list,
italian-studies - so, before he says "basta!", I will...
Steven Botterill
Associate Professor of Italian Literature
Graduate Adviser, Department of Italian Studies
Department of Italian Studies
6303 Dwinelle Hall #2620
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-2620
(510) 642-6246 (voice)
(510) 642-9884 (FAX)
http://ls.berkeley.edu/dept/italian/botterill.htm
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