Re: Genders

On Tue, 5 Sep 2000 16:45:53 +0200 Mangiat <mangiat@...> writes:
> Hello everyone.
> I was wondering about a conlang I'm sketching down. I'd like to
> insert a
> male-female gender distinction. How would this happen? In which
> gender would
> inanimate objects go? How do Arabic and Hebrew treat inanimate
> objects,
> plants, flowers, animals ? Is each category tied to a special
> gender, or is
> their ending to determinate it? What distinction could there be
> between male
> and female in the oldest stage of the tongue? PIE seems to treat
> female
> nouns as a inanimate plural (but I'm sure feminists would rather
> call it 'a
> group plural' : ). How is the whole thing in PSemitic?
> And about a IE-like 3-gender system: is it common, or a peculiarity
> of our
> language-family? Are there other families with this kind of gender
> system?
> Luca
-

In Hebrew, each inanimate object usually has it's own gender, although
there are some categories - "cities and countries are always feminine" is
one rule i remember from middle school.  Besides that, it usually just
goes by the individual word.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "moo!  moo!  moo!"