Re: [OT] Grammatic gender

[David Kastrup]

David Wright <address@hidden> writes:

> 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?

"The duchess ate her lunch" as opposed to "The duchess ate its lunch"?

German: "Das Mädchen aß seine Mahlzeit.".

>> > 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.

"Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd"

Sonnet 18 by Shakespeare.

-- 
David Kastrup