Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!news.mathworks.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!EU.net!sun4nl!cs.vu.nl!dick
From: dick@cs.vu.nl (Dick Grune)
Subject: Re: Noun Genders
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Organization: Fac. Wiskunde & Informatica, VU, Amsterdam
Date: Mon, 14 Aug 1995 10:50:00 GMT
Message-ID: <DDArFD.9Mz.0.-s@cs.vu.nl>
Lines: 23

> Glynis Baguley,gmb@natcorp.ox.ac.uk asked 
> > Do speakers of languages in which nouns have gender actually think of
> > the names of objects being  masculine or feminine, or are these just
> > grammatical terms that only matter in grammar lessons?

I think there is a comparable phenomenon in English that might serve to make the
process more understandable for native speakers of English.

Some time ago I heard somebody here whose native language is not English start
a sentence with:  "The student with which ..." and for 1/20th of a second I
thought the sentence would continue "... I bashed in the dean's head", but of
course it didn't.

I think it is the same process which prevents a native speaker of English to
say "The student with which ..." that also prevents a native speaker of
French from saying "la cigarette, il est toujours dans sa boite".

Dick Grune					| email: dick@cs.vu.nl
Vrije Universiteit				| ftp://ftp.cs.vu.nl/pub/dick
de Boelelaan 1081				| http://www.cs.vu.nl/~dick
1081 HV  Amsterdam, the Netherlands		| tel: +31 20 444 7744
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