Re: how does a language develop gender??

From: Brian M. Scott (b.scott_at_csuohio.edu)
Date: 03/30/05 

Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 21:53:31 -0500

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005 11:37:39 +1000, Jacques Guy
<jguy@alphalink.com.au> wrote in
<news:424a02e4$1@news.alphalink.com.au> in sci.lang:

> sonjaaa@gmail.com wrote:

>> I can think of a few cases where a language has evolved and loss
>> grammatical gender where it had it before, e.g. Dutch has lost one
>> gender.

>> I'd love to examine cases where a language has developped gender where
>> it didn't have it before. How does a language develop gender? I'm
>> especially curious about languages with grammatical genders for
>> non-human and non-sexed nouns, what kind of transitory steps a language
>> goes through to have something like this grow through the whole
>> grammar.

> You should not ask embarrassing questions like that. They only
> go to show how much we still don't know.

> Better tell us about x-bar raising and discipline and bondage
> in the Hiw dialect of Ureparapara. [...]

Ooh, do they have unprincipled paramours, too? In minimal
clothing?

Brian

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