Re: Sarah's language.

I think the thing I was going for in the separation of plurals into their
own "genders" is that some designations don't extend to the plural.  That
is, there are separate declensions for baby/animal versus child/youth, when
the noun is singular -- but four babies, six animals, eight children, and
thirty-six teenagers all get the same declension.  The same goes for
adults -- there's different ones for one man, one woman, etc., but three
women, six men, or fourteen adults (not gender specific) would all get the
same declension.  I think that idea came from how in Russian, the plural
form of "you" and the formal singular form of "you" are the same (that is,
it's the same pronoun, and they're declined the same)  I have NO real
linguistics training so I'm guessing when I say things like "gender."  I
can't quite remember what I meant by "collective personages -- plural" but
I'm pretty sure it was for mixed groups (that is, a "class" or something) or
for universal groups (all women, all men, all babies).



Sarah Marie Parker-Allen
lloannna@surfside.net
http://lloannna.blogspot.com
http://www.geocities.com/lloannna.geo

"There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even
though the end may be dark."
-- J.R.R. Tolkien

> -----Original Message-----
> Behalf Of Padraic Brown
> Giving plural forms their own separate genders is
> a bit confusing to me. Are women as a group (or
> for that matter a group of women) a different
> gender than a single woman, then?
>
> Padraic.
---
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