Re: gender in English

"SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY" wrote:
>
> On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Muke Tever wrote:
>
> > You might say nouns and adjectives are zero-marked for gender in English
> > (yes, except on pronouns), but it's definitely there, even if it's only
> > natural gender and not grammatical gender.   Frex:
>
> Another point to think about: the gender we typically assign to
> personifications and anthropomophisms often corresponds to the Old English
> gender. For example, Death is a male; in children's stories dogs are
> usually male, cats female. And the Moon has a man in it, not a woman.
> Makes sense if English has gender for all its nouns, but is much more
> lenient in enforcing them.
>
That's an interesting idea, Marcus. I'd never thought of that. My first
inclination, though, is to attribute that to the Old English genders
still embedded in our social subconscious, surfacing with
personification & such, rathern than to the genders still being active
in Modern English. For example, Death might typically be male in our
literature, but that's more tradition than the language. If I were to
write a story with Death as a female, it wouldn't be the traditional
personification, but it is still perfectly acceptible in our language.

--
Robert