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What word decides the gender? | ||
Tags: Gender | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3915 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: French | Message 1 of 4 09 July 2014 at 9:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Most of the non English languages I know anything about have some form of gender with nouns, and other words, and my question basically is what word in a sentence usually is the word that decides the gender of a sentence?
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| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5264 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 4 09 July 2014 at 9:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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In Romance languages, "sentences" don't have gender. Nouns and (some) pronouns do. The nouns (pronouns) determine the adjectives' and some possessives' (Portuguese: seu M; sua F- for example) gender. ex: Aquela lenha é pesada. That firewood is heavy. (F) Aquele homem é pesado. That man is heavy (M). Nouns and adjectives must agree as to gender. Edited by iguanamon on 09 July 2014 at 11:26pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6869 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi | Message 3 of 4 11 July 2014 at 2:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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Like iguanamon wrote, I find gender primarily a property of (pro)nouns. Then, that gender is often reflected in adjective and verb forms.
From English, you're familiar with number agreement. The boy walks, but the boys walk. The noun (boy/boys) governs the verb. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4255 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 4 19 July 2014 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||
"non English languages" comprises of some 6000-8000 languages, most of which utilize no system of gender whatsoever, so this question is really broad. I could go nitpicking about whether you mean the Indo-European gender system or the Semitic one or perhaps some other but I'm pretty sure you mean the likes of German, French and Spanish, none of which have gendered sentences. The gender system just means that the gender of the head of a noun phrase, for example "a big dog" has to be reflected by its complements, as in "ein großer Hund" or "un perro grande". Edited by Henkkles on 19 July 2014 at 3:31pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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