Re: The Birds and the Bees of Gender

Michael Mouatt wrote:
>
> Could someone please explain gender to me (as it relates to language). I
> just can't seem to understand the necessity of verb - noun agreement.
> Doesn't it just add a whole stratum of complexity? Why must there really
> be a 'le' and a 'la' in French? English is an asexual language, isn't
> it? Why is this so if it is a Germanic language with influences from
> French?
Well, I wouldn't call English *asexual*, we still have "he/she/it", but
that's a very limited form of gender, and is almost entirely semantic
(depending on gender).  There are a few exceptions, like how ships are
traditionally referred to as "she".  Saturday Night Live once did a skit
on that, where two sailors are discussing a ship, saying things like
"she's a good ship", and then one remarks on the other's cigarette
lighter, "She's a good lighter, I bought her at [some place]", and so
on, then one shows the other a picture of his daughter, "It's a cute
girl", and a few other "it"s  :-).

Anyhoo, Gender has many uses.  One is to give more information.  For
instance, the contrast between amigo and amiga in Spanish.  It also
allows for a smaller root vocabulary, sometimes, for instance, Spanish
uses the same roots for both genders of ALL family members except
parents, thus hijo/hija (son/daughter), tio/tia (uncle/aunt), etc.
Parents are the one exception, padre/madre - this is true in ALL
language, father and mother are always different roots.

It can also allow for free word order in some languages, altho none of
the European languages do this.  Swahili, for instance, agrees with both
subject and object in gender.  Thus, if subject and object are different
genders, word order can be free.  There are no cases, which is the
subject and which is the object is shown on the verb.

Besides, gender is just so cool, when it's more than just
male/female/(neuter)!  :-)

--
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was hanged." - Irish proverb
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