🚀 go-pugleaf

Kalen <paradox@intelligencia.com> wrote in message
news:3822A1F5.2650AB0@intelligencia.com...
> Mark Rosenfelder wrote:
> > The masculine/feminine/neuter business goes back for centuries-- it's
> > familiar and there is some correspondence with sex.  We could call them
> > vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry, but then people would ask why you
> > have to use vanilla adjectives for men and chocolate for women.
> >
> > As for the purpose of gender, consider English vs. French:
> >   --J'ai mis la cle sur le livre.  --Je ne le vois pas.
> >   "I put the key on the book."  "I don't see it."
> >
> > Is it the key or the book that the second person can't see?  In French
it's
> > obvious, because of the gender.
> >
> > Or consider the amusing French film _Le grand blond avec une chaussure
> > noire_.  The adjectives tell us the title character's sex; the English
title
> > needs to add another noun to give the same information.
> >
> > Gender agreement may also help in parsing, since it offers extra clues
> > on what words go with each other.
>
> Thank you for the reasonable, non-condescending, and educational
> response. I can now see a use for word genders, though I'm still not
> sure they're worth the hassle.

You say that as though they are a feature that somebody decided to add to
languages to accomplish the purposes that they sometimes seem to serve, a
decision made based on a feeling that it would be "worth the hassle". That's
not how it works. Languages have features. Eventually, someone describes
those features, observing, among other things, into what general
classifications one can place the way words based on the way they are
treated.