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Basque Gender Marking (was Re: Further language development Q's)

From:Chris Bates <chris.maths_student@...>
Date:Tuesday, September 21, 2004, 16:26
Talking about the Basque verbal system has reminded me... if the person
being talked to is close or intimate (and also singular... this doesn't
happen when addressing many people) basques can use special auxilliary
verb forms which also reflect the gender of the addressee! This seems
similar to the "dative of interest" in Romance languages, but it seems
strange to me since Basque does not exhibit any gender agreement or
gender marking in the noun system, or in any other part of the verbal
system. This seems to be just about the only grammaticised gender
marking in basque.
 Anyway, I was talking about it because its yet more agreement in the
basque verbal system on top of what I've already mentioned, so the list
is now: the auxilliary verb agrees with the Actor, Patient, Recipient,
and the Gender of the addressee (if that addressee is familiar or
intimate). I don't think even Inuit can beat this level of agreement
lol... and it just goes to show that some of the systems I've scrapped
as exhibiting excessive agreement (and producing verb forms that were
too long) weren't really that bad after all.