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Does Spanish have a neuter gender | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4512 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 17 of 41 15 August 2012 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Yes, Serpent. But it's not the case when a word has got a prior "lo". Anyway, as someone said before, there's no total agreement among experts about the existence of a neutral Spanish gender. In my opinion (but I'm not an expert) it exists indeed, but I also think that it is too restraint to obligue students to take care of it.
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| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5431 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 18 of 41 15 August 2012 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Really, this is not worth arguing about. Call it what you may, the lo+masculine adjective form is not a gender of the same status as el and la. And that's the main issue. It's not like the German die, der and das. There are only two main grammatical genders in Spanish; if you want to call lo+masculine adjective a neutral gender, go right ahead.
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| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5784 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 19 of 41 16 August 2012 at 2:00am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I don't know, I always thought that a neuter gender was a reality in groups suchs as:
este esta esto ese esa eso él ella ello I'm not knowledgeable enough to claim that esto etc are nueter; but if they aren't can somebody explain why not? Now regarding other word classes the above is quite important as if "esto" is neuter then logically so must otro be in phrases like "esto otro", which would then be concrete evidence of a masculine form being used for the nueter. Or consider phrases like "esto no lo quiero". Again, if esto is nueter then logically surely so must lo in this sentence (yes I know that here "lo" is a direct object pronoun and not a nominaliser as the "lo" you guys were discussing above, but my point is that it has the same form as the masculine do pronoun). Similarly that would also be evidence that nueter adjective forms do exist but have the same form as the masculine (e.g. "esto es muy aburrido" if esto is neuter logically surely aburrido is too in this sentence because adjectives agree c.f. "esta serie es muy aburrida"). Following these lines of evidence I would tend to think "lo + adjective" really is neuter. Further "lo de" can sometimes be replaced by "esto de" (albeit with a slight change of meaning) as in "lo/esto de ganar la eurocopa es que..." (if you're Spanish). I'm not claiming the above as knowledge, just how it looks to me...it'll be interesting to see whether I'm right. Sorry to keep this going, I agree this subject is not worth arguing about, but I do find it interesting. Edited by Random review on 16 August 2012 at 6:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 20 of 41 16 August 2012 at 7:37am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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We discussed this a couple of years ago as well:
"It" in Spanish Edited by tractor on 16 August 2012 at 7:39am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5784 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 21 of 41 16 August 2012 at 8:04am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
@tractor: do you mean this?
But if my post above is right then there is a neuter, else how to explain "esto" (which isn't a masculine form)? And then you can deduce a neuter "lo" from "esto" as I did above. Edit: oh, wait. I see on reading further into your thread that others (including you) make exactly this argument.
I also think they must agree, but that the adjective here is in a neuter form which happens to be identical to the masculine. It sounds like I'm claiming a useless assumption which can't be proved; but without it gender agreement doesn't apply. To me, at this point in the debate, the assumption that "pequeño" is neuter to agree with the pronoun "eso" in the above sentence Eso pequeño de ahí no me gusta seems more parsimonious than the assumption that gender agreement breaks down here because Spanish has a neuter for pronouns but not adjectives (and that therefore the adjective reverts to a masculine unmarked form); but I admit that I don't have any real evidence for that. Actually, stating the opposing theory explicitly above has made it seem a lot more convincing to me. If what I wrote above was correct I'd expect "lo+infinitive" when in fact we get "el+infinitive". It would seem a bit of a stretch to suppose that infinitives are masculine! Hmmm...as you can see from that last sentence, I've changed my opinion completely since starting this message (but I'll let the above paragraph stand to show what I was thinking when I started it). I'm still fairly convinced that lo+adjective is neuter, as demonstrated by phrases like: "lo interesante es esto..." (not este); but that obviously doesn't mean that the nominaliser "lo" is a neuter article or a neuter pronoun, nor that the adjective is in a neuter form, only that the whole phrase "lo+adjective" is neuter. Perhaps (it seems that way to me) the nominaliser "lo" here is a pronoun and not an article (since the pronoun system (at least for those pronouns that aren't clitics) is the one area where a neuter does seem unequivocally to exist in Spanish). Does anybody know? Sorry to make this post so long. I guess where I feel I'm at now is the idea that the neuter does exist in Spanish, but only in the pronoun system. That the nominaliser "lo" in "lo+adjective" constructions is a neuter pronoun, but I have been convinced by this thread that there is no neuter form (identical to the masculine) for adjectives, instead the unmarked form (masculine) is used to agree with neuter pronouns. Furthermore, if "lo" here is a pronoun then (a) it makes more sense that it could act as a nominaliser in the first place and (b) for our purposes it frees us from the anomaly of a neuter article which isn't used with infinitives (instead the unmarked masculine article is used). What an interesting topic! Thanks for the link to the other thread, tractor. Edited by Random review on 16 August 2012 at 8:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4512 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 22 of 41 16 August 2012 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Regarding the words lo, ello, esto, eso, aquello are undoubtedly considered neuter forms even by the Real Academia de la Lengua Española. (And in my books of primary school as I recall, too :P).
You guys can look for them at the "Diccioanrio panhispánico de dudas" (online here: http://lema.rae.es/dpd/). I've copied a text from its "pronombres personales átonos 1. Formas": La forma neutra lo se emplea cuando el antecedente es un pronombre neutro (esto, eso, aquello), toda una oración o el atributo en una oración copulativa: Él no dijo eso, lo dije yo; Que no quieras ir, lo comprendo; —¿Eran guapas? —Sí, lo eran. It's interesting to point out that in the tables of pronouns, the word "usted" is clearly associated with both masculine and femenine, while the word "ello" is clearly pointed out as neuter. Regarding the word otro, it isn't neutral, but masculine. The femenine form is "otra". Edited by Dagane on 16 August 2012 at 1:00pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5784 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 23 of 41 16 August 2012 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Yes, whether "otro" is an adjective or a pronoun it does rather seem that the masculine form is used as an unmarked form. As an adjective this is the same pattern as all the other adjectives, but it is odd that when it is a pronoun it doesn't have a neuter form. Did the pronoun have a separate neuter form in old Spanish? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Dagane Triglot Senior Member SpainRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4512 days ago 259 posts - 324 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishB2, Galician Studies: German Studies: Czech | Message 24 of 41 16 August 2012 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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As far as I know there wasn't a neuter form for "otro, otra, otros, otras", although other neuter forms which are already lost did exist.
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