Re: word gender identity

En réponse à Henrik Theiling :


>Yes, the question mark was for you, Christophe! :-)
Hehe :) .


>It that a French-only phenomenon?  'Amour' is special anyway because
>it was re-borrowed from another romancelang (Occitan?), right?  (Had
>it not been, it would be 'ameur').
Indeed. And actually "ameur" is what is heard sometimes in colloquial
speech in the North of France :) .

>   But are there examples from other
>romancelangs that have similar things?  (I would not expect this too
>much in Italian or Spanish due to the highly syntactic pluralisation
>showing gender so overtly, but who knows?)
Actually, I think the phenomenon appears (or used to appear) in Spanish
too, although it has been levelled out much more than in French. I wouldn't
be surprised if the phenomenon appeared in other Romance languages, but was
levelled out, especially in languages where gender is more marked on nouns
than it is in French.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.