Re: [OT] Grammatic gender

[David Wright]

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?

> > 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.

Cheers,
David.