Re: gender in English

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.

Marcus