Re: Optimum number of symbols, though mostly talking about french now
| From: | Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, May 24, 2002, 7:48 |
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Quoting Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>:
> En réponse à Kendra <kendra@...>:
>
> > True, true. English speakers can still refer to ships as she after
> > all, which always amused me. Grammatical gender itself doesn't
> > bug me, it adds variety. French gender doesn't seem to be COMPLETLEY
> > arbitrary or unintelligible or anything. Personally, I just don't
> > understand why verbs need to agree in gender...
> > that's just an odd concept to me.
>
> Verbs agreeing in gender? Sorry but that's not the case. What you're
> talking about is past participles.
Well, that depends on your theory of morphology. Do you call
clitic pronouns a agreement markers? If so, some French verbs
(IIRC) inflect for person, number and gender of subject, direct
object, indirect object. Working linguists I know actually
disagree about this fact, so I think it's fair to claim that
French verbs inflect for gender.
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Thomas Wier "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637 Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers
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