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Re: What's a gender?

From:Lars Finsen <lars.finsen@...>
Date:Saturday, December 30, 2006, 14:13
Den 30. des. 2006 kl. 06.16 skrev Eugene Oh:

> Ah that's new-- do you have any examples?
Yes, here are some common neuters: hus (house), tog (train), øye/au(g) e (eye), øre/øyre (ear) in indef.sg. Def.pl. is not -ane/-an like in masculine or -ene/-en/-ane like in feminine, but -a (or -o in some dialects, -an only in the far north), like the feminine def.sg: husa, toga, øya, øra. The indef.sg is endingless in all genders, and the masculine and neuter def.sg. are not identical, -en and -et respectively, but markedly different from the feminine def.sg. -a, although the t in -et is not pronounced. (Linguists tend to write the e off as a schwa, too, but I think this is over-reducing it. However, the e in the masculine -en is very reduced. In fact I think it giving it too much credit to call it a schwa, rather the n is syllabic.) In some dialects the n.def.pl. -a actually has spread to a few feminines with plural umlauted roots ending in -en, example: hand, def.sg. handa, indef.pl. hender, def.pl. henda. The d is another mute consonant. (Our writing systems have long been badly in need of reform in my opinion.) The most common forms: Masc. Fem. Neut. Indef.sg. - - - Def.sg. n *a/i e Indef.pl. ar/a/ær er/e/ar -/a Def.pl. ane/an ene/en/ane *a/o/an These definite forms arose from the practice of merging definite articles onto the ends of nouns, starting around a 1000 years ago. The forms were rather different then, but again with the neuter plurals resembling the feminine singulars, which I think does suggest a connection to an IE origin. Hope the table looks ok to you. LEF

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Eugene Oh <un.doing@...>