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Interesting comments have been made, thank you, yet I still miss a direct answer to my question. It does not concern grammatical gender, but the choice between the pronoun "it", which refers to the animal as a thing, and the alternative "he" viz. "she". Would anybody use "he" or "she" for a rat, a mouse, a goldfish or a louse?
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Dunno about the louse, but the others I could easily see being called "he" or "she." Depending, of course. If you're looking for a hard and fast, rule-bound answer, I don't think you're going to get one. I do hear "he" quite frequently for insects, even when it is biologically inappropriate, e.g., ants, bees, or blood-sucking mosquitoes.
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'Would anybody use "he" or "she" for a rat, a mouse, a goldfish or a louse?'
To the extent that the first three are pets, I think they would be referred to with correct gender if it is known. Wild mice scurrying behind the refrigerator or rats who find their way to the chicken feed are almost always "its." Likewise, a louse is most commonly called an "it," unless it refers to a specimen of the human species, in which case it is also occasionally referred to as an "it" but mostly, in that instance, for emphasis.
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Would it not depend on the 'emotional attachment' to whatever creature? I can imagine an isolated prisoner having dear conversations with one or some of his lice. Might even give them gender related proper names.
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There used to be an unwritten (?) rule that if the gender (be it of a human or a creature) was either not known or not specified, the masculine was used. AFAIK, Women's Lib changed that, so it's speaker's/writer's choice now.
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AFAIK, Women's Lib changed that If you're talking about singular they it goes back to King Alfred (849-899}
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singular they If you want to read a nice history of the usage, here's the MWDEU ( link) and a blog entry I just happened to read t'other day ( link). The blogger of the latter is a graduate student in linguistics at UCSD. The irony is, how wrong folks usually are about when something started: it's even got a name, the recency fallacy and it's usually blamed on the author's favorite other.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Good read.
I tend to refer to things such as the weather in a feminine sense as well. She's blowin a gale, She's gonna rain today. Even things such as the ocean, the air, space, she's a big old universe out there. It(She) maybe a cultural thing.
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For whatever reason, boats are traditionally referred to in the feminine, as are cars often. I don't know if this is exclusive to the US, but suspect it started across the pond. I've always thought it was definitely rooted in sexism. The big powerful boat may be female, but she's nothing without a man to guide her.... that sort of crap. Nowadays boats can guide themselves; at least this boat does!
Goldfish are impossible to sex, as are some birds, but we have some guppies, and they are referred to appropriately.
Coincidentally, the Bible passage last Sunday was James 9:36 "Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them..." I found this very curious. The version is NRSV, which differs from nearly all other versions with its use of the neuter "it". I don't know what research was done to prompt such a change, but I thought it was interesting.
Also interesting to me is that people in the US seem uncomfortable referring to a fetus as "it", and want the mother to either find out ASAP, or guess and use one or the other. To me this indicates the perception of objectification of people, which is apparently unacceptable. I like that. But I still didn't "find out" what sex any of my babies were before they were born. Life these days holds few surprises, and I wanted some! I do ramble on, though.... :0)
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I hear it used for babies often, but usually in the question, "Is it a boy or a girl?" In our FWIW Dept. cild, 'child' in Old English was neuter.
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