Re: [The Birds and the Bees of Gender]

At 12:39 01/04/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Ed Heil wrote: "Genders are (as someone else explained well) one subtype of
>noun classifier system.  [snip] Proto-Indo-European had a very small
>classifier system, with three categories, Masc., Fem., and Neuter (perhaps
>originally only two, Animate and Neuter), whose prototypical subcategories
>were men, women, and inanimate objects respectively."
>
>I just thought I'd add my 2 cents in here. In English we call these
>grammatical categories of words 'gender' because Indo-European
>*grammatical* genders are identified with mammalian *sexual* genders. So in
>French, for example, le maison [the house] has the 'gender' (grammatical
>category) that most identifiably male creatures do.
        Unhappily for you, "maison" is of the FEMININE gender. You must say "la
maison". But it doesn't change anything to the rest of your post.

[snip]

>Gender didn't really make sense to me deep down until I learned this
>explanation in college, even though I could *use* it just fine in French
>and other languages.
        Not so fine I think. But don't worry, even we French have sometimes
problems with genders (what the hell must one say: "un enzyme" or "une
enzyme"? :) ).

 I thought this might help people on this list who were
>trying to think about grammatical gender, so that's why I posted this
>[late] addendum to this Birds & Bees discussion.
>
>BB
>
>*********
>"You know what I blame this on the breakdown of? Society!!"
>        - Moe, "The Simpsons"
>
>Everyone thinks I'm psychotic, except for my friends deep inside the earth.
>
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>
>James E Johnson, 1920-1999
>
>
                                                        Christophe Grandsire
                                                |Sela Jemufan Atlinan C.G.

"Reality is just another point of view."

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