Re: What's a gender?

Italian is notable for its number of m sg -> f pl nouns, to be sure,
but Spanish and other romlangs also exhibit the phenomenon.  I believe
the nouns in question all (or at least mostly) derive from Latin
neuters, which resemble masculine nouns in the singular and feminine
(singular) nouns in the plural.


On 12/29/06, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
> Sounds very much like Italian!
>
> Eugene
>
> 2006/12/29, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>:
> > On 12/29/06, Julia Schnecki Simon <helicula@...> wrote:
> > > 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".
> >
> > Sounds good to me. And let's call the third underlying gender "neuter" :)
> >
> > Cheers,
> > --
> > Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
> >
>

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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