Re: Mixed person plurals: gender & the (in/ex)clusive distinction; ...
| From: | Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, August 12, 2005, 10:34 |
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Hallo!
Doug Dee wrote:
> In a message dated 8/11/2005 11:54:55 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> joerg_rhiemeier@web.de writes:
>
> >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.
>
> Are these rules exceptionless? I ask because it's been claimed that there
> are no natural languages in which the gender of all nouns can be predicted with
> 100% reliability from their form. If these rules have no exceptions, then Old
> Albic violates this alleged universal.
There are indeed a few excptions: _are_ `sun', _sino_ `moon',
_nabo_ `sky', _dage_ `earth', and probably a few others I haven't
found out about yet. The gender markers of the words above are
primarily mythologically motivated; however, these are usually
treated as having common gender.
Greetings,
Jörg.