Re: Indo-European Languages and Gramatical Gender Loss

"Andrew" == Andrew Woode <andrew_woode@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Andrew> On 14 Jun, 06:03, VK <schools_r...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> In the elevated style some personal pronouns are preferred over
>> others for some nouns. Say seamen say "she" about the ship:
>> "She came to the port today". I don't know though if it's
>> leftover of old grammatical gender relations or just modern
>> poetic association like "a ship - a beloved woman" or so.

I also used to think that refering to ships with "she" was caused by
the feminine gender for the word "ship" in OE.


Andrew> Are there any feminine words for 'ship' in Old English
Andrew> which might justify the gender historically? 'Scip' itself
Andrew> is neuter.

Oh! Thanks for the info.

When learning German, I immediately recognized that "Schiff" is a
cognate with English "ship". But it is neuter in German. So, that
makes me ask whether the cognate in OE is also neuter. Of course, it
is possible for different languages to assign different genders to
words of the same meanings. (e.g. Fr "la lune" vs. German "der
Mond".) But is that usual for cognates in languages descended from a
common ancestor?



--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦 ~{@nJX6X~}

E-mail: danlee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
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