Re: What's a gender?

Hello!

On 12/22/06, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Remi Villatel writes:
> > On Thursday 21 December 2006 20:50, Eldin Raigmore wrote:
> >
> > > @Mark: I forgot to mention that "genders" are _obligatory_.  That is,
> > > they are concordial noun-classes such that every noun is in one and only
> > > one of them, and can't change.
> >
> > I answer even if this wasn't addressed to me 'cause I liked this part.
> >
> > My first reaction when I read this: "Hooray! I broke another
> > universal!"  ;-)
>
> Hehe.
>
> Does it count as breaking that universal if the gender changes between
> singular and plural?  Since French and Italian have some examples
> (deriving from the Latin neuter: sg.m. ouvo, pl.f. ouve 'egg','eggs'.
> (And I think 'orgue' is a French example that switches gender.)
I seem to have misplaced my copy of Corbett's book, but I remember him
mentioning this phenomenon and I think he analyzes this kind of noun
as belonging to a *third* gender. It works something like this:

We observe that all nouns in the language can be assigned to one of
two singular classes (let's call them Sg1 and Sg2) and one of two
plural classes (Pl1 and Pl2). Most nouns either belong to Sg1 and Pl1,
or to Sg2 and Pl2. Therefore the language has two genders. Let's call
the Sg1/Pl1 class "masculine" and the Sg2/Pl2 class "feminine". :-)

But what is this? A few nouns seem to belong to Sg1 and Pl2! (But
there seem to be no nouns that belong to Sg2 and Pl1.) Do they somehow
switch gender every now and then? Are they hermaphrodites? (:-) Or is
there another, better way to explain this?

Let's start by rephrasing the conclusion above: instead of saying that
the language has two genders, we'll be more careful this time and say
that it has two *surface* genders.

Since there are nouns that are neither clearly "masculine" nor clearly
"feminine", but behave in a predictable way anyway, these nouns form a
third group that surfaces as "masculine" in the singular and
"feminine" in the plural. Let's therefore assume that beside the two
surface genders, the language has three underlying genders, one of
which surfaces as "masculine under any circumstances", one as
"feminine under any circumstances", and one as "masculine in the
singular and feminine in the plural".

Or something like that. As I mentioned, I can't find my copy of the
book, but I hope I remembered the analysis correctly...

Regards,
			Julia 8-)
			(relurking now)

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)

Reply