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Re: irregular conlangs -- Gender

From:Matt Pearson <jmpearson@...>
Date:Friday, October 8, 1999, 23:16
Ed Heil wrote:

>And IIRC, "gender" just comes from "genus, generis," meaning "type;" >its meaning of "sex" is entirely a consequence of IE languages sorting >things into "types" according to which sex or lack thereof they >belonged to. > >(I wonder whether "sex" itself has a similar origin? I've no >resources at hand to look it up...)
It probably does. "Sex" is derived from the Latin root "seg-", meaning "cut/divide", as in "segment", "section", and "insect". So the original sense of "sex" would seem to be "division" or "category". Matt.