irregular conlangs -- Gender

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...)

---------------------------------------------------------------
Ed doesn't know everything, but he hasn't figured that out yet.
Please break it to him gently.              edheil@postmark.net
---------------------------------------------------------------

Don Blaheta wrote:

> Quoth mathias lassailly:
> > Dans un courrier dat=E9 du 08/10/99 11:56:46  , Paul a =E9crit :
> > > This strikes me as being the remnant of a complex Gender system in
> > >  proto-japanese.
> > > =20
> > >  Is there any truth in that?
> >=20
> > it's all chinese-rooted classificators.
> > except for the last one (-tsu) and i'd bet for -ri (people) and -ka
(day).
> > and now thinking of it i realize there are tens more. but all of them=
 are
SJ.
> > rather than proto-japanese i'd say it's prothese-japanese.
> >=20
> > what do you mean by "gender" ?
> > we europeans and else have man, woman and optionally castrated,
> > but that's never been the case in japanese.
>=20
> Grammatical gender doesn't have anything to do with physical gender, at
> least not necessarily.  In the European languages we still call them
> "masculine", "feminine", and sometimes "neuter", but it's really just a
> class system.  How feminine is a door, really (la fen=EAtre, die T=FCr)=
?  So
> by "gender" in this instance, we refer to whether something is a flat
> thing other than a runway, tennis court, or pond, or in fact a runway,
> court, or pond, or yet some other "gender" of word. :)
>=20
> --=20
> -=3D-Don Blaheta-=3D-=3D-dpb@cs.brown.edu-=3D-=3D-<http://www.cs.brown.=
edu/~dpb/>-=3D-
> Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can tell
> all their good points and qualifications in just 30 seconds.
>=20