[B-Greek] Gender

Dr. Don Wilkins drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net
Tue May 15 13:47:22 EDT 2007


Randall, I don't think this is a topic we want to explore here. If we  
disagree, it is probably due to a difference of presuppositions, and  
I think the point was to give a simple answer to a simple though  
possibly profound question. I acknowledge the fact that you have  
sound reasons for the answer you gave, but if I may say so, to grasp  
the sense of your answer one must first understand those reasons, and  
without them it may otherwise sound like a mistake. In reality,  
perhaps, one cannot offer a simple answer to the question, and  
neither yours nor mine would suffice in an intermediate Greek class  
(yours too complex, mine too simplistic).

Don Wilkins

On May 14, 2007, at 5:01 PM, Randall Buth wrote:

> On 5/14/07, Dr. Don Wilkins <drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> I read the question differently. I would say that if we were playing
>> Jeopardy!, the question to Randall's answer would more likely be, why
>> do the Greeks use suffixes? It seems to me that Delbert is asking one
>> of those "mind set" questions that are so difficult to answer.
>
> I was trying to demystify it and get it out of the 'mindset' area
> through a cross-linguistic perspective.
>
>> On the
>> surface, since Greek recognizes the neuter as well as masculine and
>> feminine, you might expect grammatical gender to match the natural
>> gender (e.g. boy/masc, girl/fem, table/neut). But there are always
>> oddities, like way/fem, that leave one scratching one's head.
>
> That was the point of my post. 'Gender' is not an absolute category
> and when one steps outside of the metaphor one sees that these are
> noun classes and can be compared cross-linguistically in ways that go
> beyond gender.
>
>> At
>> least gender in Greek makes more sense over all than in many other
>> languages, especially those that have only masculine and feminine.
>
> 'makes more sense ... than in many other languages' sounds like the
> Euro-centric ideas from the 19th century.
> Noun classes always end up with random insertiions in every language.
> And languages closer to home always SEEM like they make more sense,
> until you start from a different perspective completely and find
> something "flawed" in IndoEuropean. [[You can read between the lines
> that I am not iimpressed with the old Latin introductions that praise
> Latin (or Greek) as some sublime creation head and shoulders above
> mortal languages. Latin has its structural lines of beauty. So does
> Muonyjaang (that's 'Dinka' to outsiders)]]
>
>> >> Are there other reasons for the Greeks using Gender (Masculine,
>> >> Feminine,
>> >> Neuter) other than to indicate which word modifies which word?
>> >>
>> >> Delbert Flora
>> >
>> > You are correct. The reason is to keep track of which words go with
>> > which words.
>> >
>> > Please note, the word 'gender' is actually a metaphor for NOUN  
>> CLASSES
>> > for adjective agreement. Greek has three noun classes. Some  
>> languages
>> > have less, either 1 or 2, and some have more, even many more. Bantu
>> > languages are notorious for many. When a language has two or three
>> > noun classes they are generally called 'gender'.
>> >
>> >
>> > Randall Buth
>
> Randall Buth
>
>
> -- 
> Randall Buth, PhD
> www.biblicalulpan.org
> χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη
> שלום לכם וברכות
> ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
> randallbuth at gmail.com




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