Re: What's a gender?

<Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:

>What constitutes grammatical gender?  Does there have to be an
>acknowledged connection to biological sex, as in most European
>langs?
>Anyway, just wondering what the criteria are.  If my conlang has
noun
>classes, does it therefore have gender, or does it depend on more
>specific details of how the classes work?
A good question.  A corollary would be: How does one differentiate,
or
reconcile, gender and declension?

Latin has 5 declensions and 3 genders for nouns (4 if you include
the
common gender), but only 3 declensions for adjectives.

Is gender determined by the adjective used with the noun?  If memory
serves, only the 5th declension (-es) has nouns only of one gender,
feminine.

1st: puella bona - poeta bonus. Both nouns are 1st declension, but
the
adjectives are 1st and 2nd.

2nd: filius bonus - ulmus bona - oppidum bonum

3rd: flos bonus - mors bona - onus bonum

4th: senatus bonus - manus bona - cornu bonum

5th: spes bona

If memory serves, "dies" is sometime masculine in the singular.

In Senjecas there are either no declensions or no genders; take your
pick.  I use the word "declension."

Six declensions, one for each vowel:
-is contains names of plants.
-es contains names of animals.
-as contains abstract nouns.
-øs contains names of mutant beings, e.g., centaurs.
-os contains inanimate concrete nouns.
-us contains names of loquent beings.

Modifying adjectives are in the same declension:
vââdu mhîrus, good man.
vêvre mhimhêres, brown squirrel.
vêrqi dôris, tall tree.

The only exceptions are the words amas, mother, and apas, father.
vââdu âmas, good mother.

Perhaps when Ray returns from his holiday, he can help us.

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/senjecas

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