Jeff Kell writes:
>In "gendered" languages (French and Spanish I know for sure, not so sure
>how pervasive it is), nouns have a "gender" such that there is no "the"
>as in "the bus", it has to be gendered as in "l'autobus" (not "la
>autobus"). How is gender determined in a noun? It is an extremely
>foreign concept in English, with a few exceptions (boats are feminine
>and often referred to that way directly with "she", "her" and so forth).
The "she" for boats is cultural; other cultures assume that boats are
boys. Personally, I've never looked to see.
A book that addresses this in some detail is L.A. Lakoff's _Women, Fire
and Dangerous Things_
(<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226468046/opt>). The book was a
favorite of the OOP-as-religion set about ten years ago, since it deals
with how people form "natural" categories of objects. However, its
linguistic interest is far greater than its technical interest.
-- Bruce
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