Re: What's a gender?

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@...>

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