Re: word gender identity

En réponse à Roger Mills :

> >
>No actual changes of gender AFAIK.  There are the few cases where Span. uses
>the masc. def. article (before bisyllables with initial /a/??)
As has already been said, the number of syllables has nothing to do with
it. The fact that the initial [a] is stressed or not is the trigger.

>  in the
>singular, but the fem. art. in the plural.  But I think the singular remains
>feminine-- it's supposedly just for euphony--
It's exactly the same thing that led to French l' for le or la in front of
vowels: liaison, except that in the case of Spanish it's more restricted.
What happened is that the Latin demonstrative feminine ILLA lost its first
syllable : (IL)LA in front of feminine nouns, except those beginning with a
stressed [a]. For those, the [a] of the article disappeared by pressure of
the following stressed [a] (ILLA AQUA became pronounced something like
[e"lakwa], reinterpreted [el "akwa], or IL(LA) AQUA), and the article
became in front of them homophonous to the masculine article.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.