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From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
Subject: Re: Genderless languages
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John Davies quotes a _New Scentist_ correspondent:

> "English uses gender words like "man" for people, "she" for ship and the
> masculine "he" for a person whose sex is unknown. Are there any
> languages - primitive, modern, whatever - that don't apply gender to any
> words other than those that clearly refer to males or females?"

I have now read about 25 postings that respond to this question without
answering it.  I can't answer it either, but at least I will restate it:

Are there any languages which

1)	have noun or pronoun genders corresponding to "masculine"
	and "feminine", and

2)	apply these only to male and female organisms, with no
	metaphorical extensions to other things?

English meets criterion 1, but fails criterion 2, as the example
of ships (called "she") indicates.  Languages like Turkish or
Chinese which fail criterion 1 aren't even in the ballpark.

-- 
John Cowan						cowan@ccil.org
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban
