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Re: [OT] Grammatic gender
From: |
David Kastrup |
Subject: |
Re: [OT] Grammatic gender |
Date: |
Wed, 15 Nov 2017 21:32:52 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/26.0.50 (gnu/linux) |
David Wright <address@hidden> writes:
> On Wed 15 Nov 2017 at 11:56:07 (-0500), Kieren MacMillan wrote:
>> Hi Simon,
>>
>> > On Nov 14, 2017, at 5:47 PM, Simon Albrecht <address@hidden> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Again, here English is very unusual because words do not have a gender
>> >> (the objects they refer to may, but that's different ... :-)
>> >
>> > How would that be true?
>>
>> See, e.g., <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender>:
>> Although Old English had grammatical genders (masculine, feminine,
>> and neuter; as in Modern German), modern English is not considered
>> to have them and aside from a handful of nouns such as "god" and
>> "goddess", "duke" and "duchess", "tiger" and "tigress", and "waiter"
>> and "waitress", gender is found almost exclusively in pronouns and
>> titles.
>
> A duchess has gender, but I don't see that the word "duchess" has
> grammatical gender. How is that expressed?
"The duchess ate her lunch" as opposed to "The duchess ate its lunch"?
German: "Das Mädchen aß seine Mahlzeit.".
>> > It may seem so, because the articles for all three genders are the
>> > same, but words are referred to by ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘it’. In
>> > English the sun is male, the moon female
>>
>> I've spoken English my entire life, and I have literally never heard
>> an exchange like:
>>
>> Q: Is the sun up yet?
>> A: Yes — he rose an hour ago.
>
> Neither have I, though there is the song "The sun has got his hat on".
> Again, personification, not grammar.
"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd"
Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare.
--
David Kastrup
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, (continued)
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Wols Lists, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Urs Liska, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, J Martin Rushton, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Blöchl Bernhard, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Helge Kruse, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Kieren MacMillan, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Karlin High, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, David Wright, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender,
David Kastrup <=
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Wol's lists, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Erik Ronström, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, David Wright, 2017/11/15
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, N. Andrew Walsh, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, David Kastrup, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Karlin High, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Wols Lists, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Werner Arnhold, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Simon Albrecht, 2017/11/16
- Re: [OT] Grammatic gender, Henning Hraban Ramm, 2017/11/17