Feminine Gender ( Concept )
http://purl.org/linguistics/gold/FeminineGender
Thing
|_ Abstract
|_ Linguistic Property
|_ Morphosyntactic Property
|_ Gender Property
|_ Feminine Gender
Definition:
A gender property established on the basis of agreement, to which nouns may be assigned if 1) they inherently denote females. Additionally, but not necessarily, nouns may be assigned this value if: 2) their formal properties (morphological or phonological) lead them to be assigned to the same agreement pattern as other nouns within the language that have female denotation. 3) they are arbitrarily assigned to the same agreement pattern as other nouns in the language that have female denotation [Corbett 1991].@en
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Examples
Language Code:
chh
In Chinook, some stems can take either masculine, feminine, or neuter prefixes, with concordant semantic impact on the word. Other stems take only one gender affix. The semantic basis for this classification is not completely transparent, but some tendencies do occur, e.g. large animals tend to be masculine while small ones tend to be feminine; qualities tend to be masculine while plants and related implements tend to be feminine; many neuter nouns are mass nouns
2009-06-04 13:28:07
2009-06-04 13:28:07
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| crab |
References:
Mithun (1999:97) FROM Hymes (1955:90-131)
Language Code:
bla
Blackfoot example of plural number and animate gender.
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| good old woman |
References:
Mithun (1999:99) FROM Frantz (1991:8-9)
| Properties | Values | Definition |
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User Submitted Issues
Languages may differ with regard to the point in the animacy hierarchy where sex-based gender assignment occurs (e.g., whether masculine or feminine is restricted to humans only, or includes domestic animals etc.). Typically, with lower-order animates, sex-based assignment will not play a role. As well as the label 'feminine', it is also possible to use an arbitrary label, such as an ArabicNumeralGender or RomanNumeralGender for this value. This may be the case in certain traditions (e.g., descriptions of Bantu and Daghestanian languages) where there is a larger number of gender values, or where the sex-based assignment system is limited to a particular portion of the animates.