Re: CONLANG Digest - 5 Sep 2000 to 6 Sep 2000 (#2000-243)
| From: | Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, September 8, 2000, 1:42 |
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Matt McLauchlin wrote:
> That was the key... whenever people start talking about gender in English
> and relating it to things in French or German or whatnot, I have to sigh and
> explain the difference between natural and grammatical gender again...
I'm not so sure that that is a fundamental difference. English has
gramaticalized gender. It just happens that it's highly predictable,
while in French or German the predictability is low. There's a whole
range of languages from the completely predictable (English coming very
close to that) to very arbitrary (French and German coming pretty close
to that).
--
"Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity, and
I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
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