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Re: [OT] Grammatic gender
From: |
David Wright |
Subject: |
Re: [OT] Grammatic gender |
Date: |
Wed, 15 Nov 2017 13:50:04 -0600 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) |
On Wed 15 Nov 2017 at 11:56:07 (-0500), Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> Hi Simon,
>
> > On Nov 14, 2017, at 5:47 PM, Simon Albrecht <address@hidden> wrote:
> >
> >> Again, here English is very unusual because words do not have a gender
> >> (the objects they refer to may, but that's different ... :-)
> >
> > How would that be true?
>
> See, e.g., <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender>:
> Although Old English had grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and
> neuter; as in Modern German), modern English is not considered to have them
> and aside from a handful of nouns such as "god" and "goddess", "duke" and
> "duchess", "tiger" and "tigress", and "waiter" and "waitress", gender is
> found almost exclusively in pronouns and titles.
A duchess has gender, but I don't see that the word "duchess" has
grammatical gender. How is that expressed?
> > It may seem so, because the articles for all three genders are the same,
> > but words are referred to by ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘it’. In English the sun is
> > male, the moon female
>
> I've spoken English my entire life, and I have literally never heard an
> exchange like:
>
> Q: Is the sun up yet?
> A: Yes — he rose an hour ago.
Neither have I, though there is the song "The sun has got his hat on".
Again, personification, not grammar.
Cheers,
David.
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, (continued)
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Wols Lists, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Urs Liska, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, J Martin Rushton, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Blöchl Bernhard, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Helge Kruse, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Kieren MacMillan, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Karlin High, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender,
David Wright <=
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, David Kastrup, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Wol's lists, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Erik Ronström, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, David Wright, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, N. Andrew Walsh, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, David Kastrup, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Karlin High, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Wols Lists, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Werner Arnhold, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Simon Albrecht, 2017/11/16