Re: What's a gender?

> > 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!"  ;-)
>
> I don't think this is a universal. There are a number of nouns in Hebrew of
> varying gender, e.g., derekh 'way', ruakh 'wind, spirit', maHane 'camp',
> shemesh 'sun'.
>
In Anishinaabemowin (aka Ojibwa, aka Ojibwe, aka Chippewa), a noun of
the Inanimate gender can be used as Animate, instead, if the
particular discourse context is right.  For example, in stories where
inanimate things come to life.  In one sentence you'll have "there was
a mirror on the table" and several later you get "and then Mirror said
to him..."  This is probably also true for the rest of the Algonquian
languages.

(Oh, and the Animate and Inanimate categories are a gender
distinction, not really an animacy distinction.  Most animate and
living things are grammatically Animate, and most inanimate and
nonliving things are grammatically Inanimate, but it's not a hard and
fast rule.  Lots of things are of an unexpected gender; it doesn't
really *encode* the animacy of the referent much more consistently
than German, say, encodes biological sex.  You can use it in
unexpected ways, however, to encode unexpected situations!)

-- Pat