Re: gender: animate and inanimate

Algonquian languages (Cree, Ojibwe, etc.) have animacy based
gender systems.  Like Indo-European sex-based systems, though,
there's a certain amount of idiosyncrasy in how nouns are
assigned to classes.  Some semantically inanimate objects go in
the animacy class, and vice versa.

Matt.

daniel andreasson wrote:

> Hey guys. I'm sorry I've been a bit off-topic and natlangy
> lately. I'll try and make it up to you somehow. :)
>
> In a discussion on another list about Swedish gender
> I mentioned that there are languages that *do* have
> the names "animate" and "inanimate" for their genders
> or noun classes. The problem is that I actually don't
> know any examples of such languages and now I've been
> asked to exemplify. D'oh! :)
>
> Could anyone give me some examples? And I mean natlangs... ;)
>
> Thanks,
>
> daniel
>
> --
> <> "Lea eica waenaidh mae bwochath waenë,   <>
> <>  ja jordhëchaidh mae gothëje jordhëchë." <>
> <>       www.geocities.com/conlangus        <>
> <>       daniel.andreasson@telia.com        <>

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