Re: Number/Specificality/Archetypes in Language

Quoting Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>:

> Fortunately we anglophones don't have examine mice closely before we talk
> about the little critters.
FYI, in my idiolect of Swedish, a male cat can be masculine, feminine or
neuter*. Feminine and neuter, because the word _katt_ "cat" itself is unstable
between these two, masculine because there is an optional rule allowing the
biological gender of gendered beings to override the grammatical. Female cats
will have to do with only feminine or neuter (I'm sure feline feminists** are
most annoyed by this!).

* I'm here operating on the assumption that that Swedish n-gender words can be
subdivided into masculines, feminines and neuters based on which personal
pronoun is used to refer to them. The fact that masculines demand partly
different adjective agreement would seem to support this view.

** Felinists?

                                               Andreas