Re: Gender in language

In article <CQ$uDSFlFOHFFwW+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Richard Herring <junk@[127.0.0.1]> wrote:

In message <1159501533.800645.21300@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
willcesium@xxxxxxxxx writes
First off, having grammatical genders isn't something people chose to
do. No one made a conscious decision to divide nouns up into different
categories, it just ended up happening that way. Gender is, in fact,
hardwired into the language component of the brain.

Don't you find it odd, then, that some languages have no expression of
that "hard-wired" feature?

No odder than that some mammals (the males) have no expression of the
hard-wired feature of mammary glands.

Just because some linguistic feature (or more appropriately, the
*potential* for that feature) is "hard-wired" doesn't mean every
language must have that feature.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

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