Re: Genders (Forgive me for this :) )
| From: | Tom Wier <artabanos@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, January 9, 2000, 21:10 |
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Barry Garcia wrote:
> I didn't know who to ask on the list about this so, here it is on the main
> list....
>
> On one of the message boards I frequent, one of the posters asked "Why
> English doesn't have any genders (for the most part) attached to nouns?".
Why *should* English have any morphological marking of gender on nouns?
Why *should* any language mark *anything* morphologically? (Chinese
comes pretty close to not doing the latter)
(Not trying to be aggressive here -- just trying to uproot that person's
basic assumptions about the way language works)
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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
AIM: Deuterotom ICQ: 4315704
<http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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