From: Torsten
Message: 66439
Date: 2010-08-12
>As for the introduction of the m./f. dichotomy, perhaps the reason was that when the idea of abstract forces or qualities was introduced, those that are spelled with a capital letter in English: Beauty, Fortune, Envy, Gluttony etc it was necessary for people at the time to personify them as something active, gods to which you could erect shrines, because all other nouns referred to something concrete in the physical world. In that way BTW the Jewish etc interdiction of graven images becomes a kind of mental training: you will have to imagine abstract forces and qualities without the mental crutch of making a representation of them in the outside world.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "andythewiros" <anjarrette@> wrote:
> > >
> > > It's what we're taught, what can I say?
> >
> > My answer would be the same. As a native speaker you learn the
> > gender of nouns as an extra feature or phoneme of the word. I
> > can't recover from memory any kind of difficulty it caused me in
> > learning my first language. It seems to be a problem only for
> > adult learners. Vestjyder speaking 'proper Danish' or some
> > compromise have the same problems getting gender right as
> > English-speakers will.
>
>
> You're right of course. But I wish to say that the different verb
> forms for each of the different personal pronouns can have a real
> grammatical function, in that the different verb endings indicate
> the different persons when the subject pronouns are omitted (as when
> unstressed) -- exactly as in Spanish. I see no grammatical function
> for grammatical gender, however, apart from making clear which
> adjective modifies which noun (which is not a very frequent
> necessity).
> >Erh, you do realize that this is identical to the English system (except you don't have infinitives and ppp's for modal verbs)? ;-)
> > > In parts of England people say "we was", "you was", "they was",
> > > so the simplification trend was perhaps artificially stopped by
> > > teachers and other upholders of old-fashioned grammatical rules,
> > > when it reached "am", "are" and "is".
> >
> > Actually until the early 20th century Danish and Swedish
> > officially distinguished in the present tense between -er (-ar,
> > -er) in all persons singular and -e (-a, -e) in all persons
> > plural. Two modal verbs were inflected like this
> >
> > present
> >
> > skal kan
> > skal kan
> > skal kan
> >
> > skulle kunne
> > skulle kunne
> > skulle kunne
> >
> >
> > past
> >
> > skulde kunde
> > skulde kunde
> > skulde kunde
> >
> > skulde kunde
> > skulde kunde
> > skulde kunde
> >
> > infinitive
> > skulle kunne
> >
> > ppp
> > skullet kunnet
> >
> >
> > Add to that that Danish pronounces -nd-, -ld- as -nn-, -ll-. A
> > system like that has to fail sooner or later the failing modal
> > verbs dragging the rest of the system with it.
> >
> > This is what we have today
> >
> > present
> >
> > skal kan
> > skal kan
> > skal kan
> >
> > skal kan
> > skal kan
> > skal kan
> >
> >
> > past
> >
> > skulle kunne
> > skulle kunne
> > skulle kunne
> >
> > skulle kunne
> > skulle kunne
> > skulle kunne
> >
> > infinitive
> > skulle kunne
> >
> > ppp
> > skullet kunnet
> >
>
>
> Such a model of simplicity.
> > BTW I'm intrigued by the fact that the whole stripe of middleI don't think I could do that, given that I myself have said things that you might have chosen to take the wrong way
> > Germanic dialects, OE OS Old Dutch have 'Einheitsplural', one
> > single plural for all persons in the plural. French uses 'on' +
> > 3sg for 'nous + 1pl, in my opinion to avoid the differently
> > stressed, therefore deviant forms of 1pl (as is 2pl). Perhaps the
> > substrate language (Venetic?) stressed like Latin, and therefore
> > wanted to eliminate the 1pl and 2pl?
> >
> > Cf
> > http://tinyurl.com/363llr9
> >
> >
>
> I'm not qualified myself to comment on the last sentence, but I hope
> others will address your question.
>
> P.S. I'm glad you didn't take my "danish-description" the wrong way,
> there was no mean-spiritedness intended.
>