🚀 go-pugleaf

There's been some discussion here of nouns (in Russian, Swedish, and other
languages) that take their gender for purposes of adjective agreement from
the sex of their referent.  I posted an article in which I opined that
these don't occur in Latin -- an error which was pointed out to me by email
within seconds.  (Thank you, Tomi Marin!)  So I've been looking more
closely at the situation in Latin.  Herewith some data, and a few musings.
Corrections, insights, and further information are solicited.

I divide these "common gender" nouns into 6 classes.  Of the 48 (?) I've
found, only five are 1st-declension and one 2nd-declension.  All the rest
are 3rd.

1)  Four adjectives of age, used substantively.
        infans           an infant, literally one who cannot talk
        adolescens (or adulescens)    one who is growing up
        juvenis          a young person
        senex            an old person
Of these, "senex" unmodified seems masculine to me -- I don't know quite
why -- but can certainly take feminine adjectives when used of an old
woman.  (But I can hardly claim "native competence" in Latin!)  "Senex"
declines anomalously, by the way, just as if the nominative singular were
*senis.

2)  Three relationship-words.
        parens           a parent, the present participle of parere, to
                             bear (as a child)
        conjunx          a spouse
        patruelis        a paternal first cousin of either sex
"Conjunx" is feminine in some underlying way -- "Conjunx dixit" means "The
wife spoke", but "Conjunx locutus est" (with masculine agreement) would be
"The husband spoke."  Also "conjuges" are not wives, but a married couple;
and "conjugalis" means "concerning marriage", not "wifely".  "Patruelis"
is interesting semantically, as are so many relation-words -- it's an
adjective "concerning a father's brother", usable as a noun.

3)  Four nouns denoting religious or cultic functions, fulfilled (depending
on the cult) sometimes by men, sometimes by women.  All are 3rd-declension.
        antistes         a priest or priestess
        augur            a seer, a soothsayer
        sacerdos         a priest or priestess
        vates            a prophet or prophetess, a seer

4)  Four nouns that seem to be really gender-neutral, as easily referring
to a woman as a man.  Of these, two are 1st-declension and two 3rd.
        advena           a foreigner, a new-comer (1st-declension)
        hospes           a stranger or foreigner, thence a guest; then, by
                             some strange process, a host -- but a hostess
                             is "hospita", so go figure
        incola           an inhabitant (1st-declension)
        praesul          a dancer, literally a "leaper in front of"

5)  A whole raft of words denoting the occupation or activity of a human
referent, but where (at least in ancient times) you'd normally expect a
male referent.  ("Traditionally male occupations" that women might
sometimes perform.)  Only one of these, auriga, is not 3rd-declension.
        artifex          an artisan
        auctor           an originator, an author
        auriga           a charioteer (1st-declension!)
        civis            a citizen
        comes            a companion, a tutor; later an Earl or Count --
                             the King's companion
        custos           a guard
        dux              a leader, a commander; later, of course, a Duke
        exsul            an exile
        heres            an heir
        hostis           originally a stranger, then an enemy
        index            an informer or spy, a "pointer-out"
        interpres        an interpreter
        judex            a judge
        miles            a soldier
        municeps         a burgher
        obses            a hostage
        opifex           a workman, a fabricator
        praeses          a president, the one in charge of something,
                             literally "sitting in front" -- Minerva is
                             "prases belli"
        princeps         first or most important (adjective), a chief
        satelles         a guard, attendant, lackey
        testis           a witness -- a very masculine-looking word :-)
        vindex           an avenger
Are these perhaps merely the iceberg-point of an underlying rule?
Tentatively:  3rd-declension masculine nouns in -s or -x or -l (which often
have no obvious way to form a corresponding feminine) whose referents are
usually men, when used of a woman or girl are (can be?) feminine for
agreement.  Question:  What counter-examples to this can be found?  For
instance, would a tall female buyer be "manceps altus femina" or "manceps
alta", or what?

6)  The names of certain kinds of animals, used with masculine agreement
for males and feminine for females.  ("Epicene" nouns, according to my
grammar.)  Interestingly, the normal way to denote the female of a species
whose name is a masculine noun (e.g. porcus = pig) is to add "femina" in
apposition.  (So "porcus femina" is a sow, but a big sow would be "porcus
femina magnus"!)  This strikes me as interesting on a couple of counts.
In English, there's no noun that can be used for human and non-human
females except "female", which if used of a particular person strikes me as
rather indecorous.  (In normal converse, you'd seldom call your sister or
your secretary a "female".)  Children take a while to learn this feature,
and speak of "girl dogs" or "lady ducks".  Of these ten, two are 1st-
declension, one 2nd, and seven 3rd.
        ales             winged; as a noun, a (large) bird;  Cassell's
                             says this is masculine only in poetry
        bos              a neat, a bull or cow
        camelus          a camel -- the only 2nd-declension common-gender
                             noun I've found
        canis            a dog or bitch
        dama             a deer, a stag (1st-declension); dama femina = doe
        grus             a crane
        perdix           a partridge
        serpens          a snake
        sus              a pig or sow
        talpa            a mole (1st-declension)
        tigris           a tiger or tigress
"Tigris" is truly strange word.  It's a borrowing from Greek, often a
fruitful source of syntactic distress in Latin, and seems to have two
different declension paradigms -- either like civis and other i-stems (but
with a variant accusative "tigrim" or "tigrin"!), or with a d-stem (gen.
tigridis, acc. tigridem, nom. pl. tigrides, etc.)  There's a "poetic"
accusative plural "tigridas", too.  Whew.

Are there "gendered" languages without any "common-gender" nouns?  Are
"common-gender" nouns usually masculine underneath?  Do other languages
have examples like "conjunx" that seem to be underlyingly feminine?  Are
there others in Latin I've missed?
-- 
Fr. John Woolley (jww@evolving.com); vastly enthusiastic about Augustine,
Austen, babies, Bach, backgammon, baseball, beer, the Bible, Botticelli, Burke,
Chesterton, Dante, Dixieland, hardboiled, Hitchcock, Dr Johnson, Latin, Mozart,
Shakespeare/de Vere, St Teresa, Tolkien, Trollope, Fats Waller, and Washington