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Re: Gender (was: LANGUAGE LAWS)

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Saturday, October 24, 1998, 5:28
Mathias M. Lassailly wrote:
> Of course it's consistent at the time it's created. It's never > whimsical then.
Maybe. But, I suspect that, except in cases where there is a residue ("left-over") gender, or one that can ratinally divide everything in the world (e.g., animate/inanimate or human/non-human), that there are some nouns that are arbitrarily placed in one gender or another, of course, since we've never been able to witness a gender system being born, we can't know for sure. -- "It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father was hanged." - Irish proverb http://members.tripod.com/~Nik_Taylor/X-Files ICQ: 18656696 AOL: NikTailor