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 | | From: | vasil_stanev | | Subject: | origin of the gramattical category "gender" | | Date: | 22 Jan 2005 05:33:54 -0800 |
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 | I dont wont to know who wrote about it,just how the gender evolved
from primitive genders like gender "animals","objects" and so on to
the modern 3(bulgarian),or 2(french),or
none(english-"cryptotypic")gender system.Plz excuse my
spelling-English is my second language.
I keep in mind that this is a very difficult question.
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| | From: | Okko | | Subject: | Re: origin of the gramattical category "gender" | | Date: | 23 Jan 2005 05:25:43 -0800 |
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| I don't think there's any difference between modern (-based) and
primitive (object/feature-based) classifications and I'm not sure one
evolved into the other. Two things speak against it:
1) In Indo-European languages, classification by '' of a thing is
only prominent because words for 'man' and 'woman' were taken as
reference for everything else.
2) In all living languages, the association of a noun and its
gender/class is essential arbitrary. Class-based (e.g. mid-size
objects, round things, small berries) and based genders are both
subject to the same grammatical rules and have the same grammatical
effects.
I think you're makine too strong a distinction between the two types of
classifications of nouns. The only thing I can think of is that nouns
in IE languages are labelled 'male' and 'female' (plus some 'neuter')
because those coins were termed by people who took 'man' and 'woman' as
marks for everything else. Not sure if that counts as evolution.
vasil_stanev wrote:
> I dont wont to know who wrote about it,just how the gender evolved
> from primitive genders like gender "animals","objects" and so on to
> the modern 3(bulgarian),or 2(french),or
> none(english-"cryptotypic")gender system.Plz excuse my
> spelling-English is my second language.
> I keep in mind that this is a very difficult question.
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