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Re: OT: Corpses, etc. (was: Re: Gender in conlangs (was: Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad)))

From:Isidora Zamora <isidora@...>
Date:Wednesday, November 12, 2003, 0:43
>I'm not entirely certain what your asking, but the reason that _bil_ and _man_ >behaves differently is that the former is epicene and the later masculine. >Let's do a little table of adj agreement endings: > >. weak sg strong sg pl >masculine -e - -a >feminine -a - -a >epicene -a - -a >neuter -a -t -a > >(The terms "weak" and "strong" are picked from German. Never having actually >studied Swedish gramamr formally, I can't recall if they're actually normally >used for Swedish too. At any rate, the "weak" forms are what you get after the >definite article, and the "strong" ones after the indefinite.)
Ok. I can see from this that Swedish has a more complex agreement system than Danish does. I had not been aware of that before. Thanks for showing me.
>BTW, this is, in my 'lect, pretty much the only place outside of pronouns >where the three n-genders differ. I'm still waiting for a good explanation >away of that masculine -e from those who want to describe Swedish as having >only two genders ("t" and "n").
Danish really does have only the two genders. Isidora