Re: Mixed person plurals: gender & the (in/ex)clusive distinction; ...

Hallo!

Doug Dee wrote:

> In a message dated 8/9/2005 5:25:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> tomhchappell@YAHOO.COM writes:
>
> >The table she gives is (77) on her page 111.
> >The genders are Feminine (F), Masculine (M), and Common (C).
> >Common gender is used for groups which contain individuals of more
> >than one individual gender.
>
> >I am not sure what she, or perhaps it is Guldemann (Guldermann?),
> >means, by the 3rd person singular common gender; does that mean
> >neuter? or non-human? or inanimate?
>
> I assume she has the usual meaning in mind: a "common genrder" 3sg would be
> used when one does not know or does not care to specify whether the
> person/thing referred to is masculine or feminine (or possibly something else).
Yes, at least this is how I use the term "common gender" in my
grammar of Old Albic.  Old Albic has an animate and an inanimate
noun class, with the animate class subdivided into the masculine,
feminine and common gender.  The common gender is used whenever
the biological gender is unknown to the speaker or irrelevant
to the discourse, and also for entities that are considered
animate but to which no gender can be meaningfully ascribed.

The gender of an animate noun is indicated by the final vowel,
which is /a/ for common gender, /o/ for masculine and /e/ for
feminine.  Inanimate nouns end in consonants.

A few examples:

_halera_ `healer' (male or female)
_heliro_ `male healer'
_helire_ `female healer'

(The vowel alternations are due to the workings of umlaut in
Old Albic.  The underlying forms are /hal-ir-a/, /hal-ir-o/,
/hal-ir-e/.)

_tamba_ `family'

The forms #_tambo_ and #_tambe_ are non-existent, because a family
cannot be meaningfully said to be male or female.

Some words have fixed gender, such as _ndero_ `man' (#_ndera_
and #_ndere_ don't exist).

In the non-singular numbers, gender distinctions are neutralized,
and the gender vowel replaced by /u/ for dual and /i/ for plural.

>        In
> English, we have masc, fem & neuter 3sg pronouns.  The lack of a common 3sg pronoun
> leads people to use "they" in the singular, or say "he or she" or write
> "(s)he" etc.
Old Albic is better off here, having a common gender pronoun _sa_
besides _so_ `he' and _se_ `she'.

Greetings,

Jörg.