Re: Another question: genders

On Thu, 10 Aug 2000 09:04:44 -0000, Lars Henrik Mathiesen <thorinn@...>
wrote:


>Or perhaps common. It's traditionally used for languages like Danish
>that only have two noun genders, common and neuter. (Some dialects of
>Danish, but viz. not the standard, still have three genders --- and
>all have masc. and fem. personal pronouns).
If I understand it correct, with the two weird genders there are two
situations that seem logically possible:

(a) One asserts that the noun has the quality of both sexes (applied to
mixed groups and hermaphroditic creatures);

(b) One does not assert that the noun has the quality of either sex, or
even denies to specify the sex.

IMO "epicene" and "common" are more typically applied to (a). I'd denote
(b) as "indeterminate".

I think _hermaphroditic_ and the like would point to creatures having
the respective biological feature.

>Or you could make one up out of whole cloth --- how about ambogenous
>"of both kinds"? (Purists may want ambogenerous instead --- but note
>that it's specifically not ambi-, since that means about, not both).
_Ambi-_ indeed can mean "both": _ambivalent_ and the like. _Ambogenous_
sounds to me as a rather ugly Greco-Latin hybrid.

If you accept neologisms, I'd propose: ambigeneric, amphogeneous,
amphoid(al).

>Then you could use common or epicene for the 'either' gender --- or
>make up another. Utergenous "of any kind," perhaps.
Again, I'd prefer _utrigeneric_, but this doesn't seem semantically
correct.


Basilius,
wondering what is the correct incorporated form of _uterque_