[B-Greek] Gender
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Fri May 18 07:04:11 EDT 2007
> (DW) I did ask, and thanks for the clarification. However, you appear
> to be begging the question when you say "Because that is what
> 'genders' are" and then present a rather nondescript explanation as a
> standard definition. Also, I think your argument is a generalization
> of the particular, evidently to deal with gender oddities. It seems
> to solve nothing. You have simply acknowledged the oddities as
> inexplicable, and have attempted to generalize the terminology to
> account for that.
Exactly. It appears that we might be in agreement.
'Noun classes' are a generalization from a particular.
It deals with gender oddities. Howwever, while it does not explain why
'table' in Greek and Spanish is put in the same class as females,
while 'table' in Hebrew is put in the same class with males, [or Gr.
QALASSA female with Hb. YAM 'male', or Gr. HLIOS male with Hb. SHEMESH
f. etc etc etc], it does accomodate the randomness both within and
across languages. It also explains and accomodates why everything
asexual isn't lumped into 'neuter' in a three-nounclass system.
So, yes, this acknowledges the oddities as inexplicable.
One note needs to be added: oddities in English sounds marginal,
something left-over that doesn't fit, while in fact, the inexplicables
and the randomness are the MAJORITY of the items. By far, the majority
of nouns in any 2-nounclass or 3-nounclass language do not have
inherent sex but are put into these grammatical classes in ways that
are unpredictable to any one language or language family. To be sure,
the random choices do tell us something, not too clear at all, about
how the choices might have been made, if we were on scene. Perhaps
'table' in Greek was associated to food and life and life with females
and 'voila' table is in the class with females. Or maybe someone in
the distant past, tripped, said PEZA for 'footstand' instead of PODS
'm. foot', thought it sounded nice with the 'A' at the end, which
stuck with others. Or just wanted a PEZA to be different from POUS m.
Then followed up with (te)TRAPEZA and TR(I)APEZA (?). Meanwhile, in
Canaan some people were buying a fine SHULHAN from some traders and
called it masculine because it was a new thing and 'davar Hadash' "new
thing" was masculine. And the first SHULHANOT m. (note the plural
formation!) were likely of `ETs 'wood m.' not EVEN 'stone f.!' Of
course, this is pure speculation, irrelevant, etc. The facts are
simply that Greek has tens of thousands of common nouns whose reasons
for categorization can only be guessed at. Ditto Hebrew. And Yes,
analogy worked within the systems so that somethings might snow-ball
and attract words into one class or another. Word shape, sound,
analogy, borrowings, unrecoverable unique events, etc., all played
their part in the coalescing of nouns into their various noun classes.
Once the -SIS nouns were put in the category with females, then other
-SIS nouns (ANAGNWSIS 'reading') were funneled that way, so that when
encountering a new -SIS word a learner knows which category it belongs
to. But the basic choice to make -SIS words and to group them in the
female class, that was fundamentally random, and not inherent to the
semantics. Linguists want a name that reflects that semantic
randomness when comparing languages across language families.
Linguists are also happy with calling things gender within a language
that has 2 or 3 grammatical noun classes. From that perspective gender
is a specific kind of grammatical nounclass.
...
>I also appreciate your effort in trying to deal with the
> problems of gender, even if I can't agree with your approach. So I
> beg to agree to disagree.
This isn't clear. I am having trouble understanding what there is to
disagree with?
Are we agreed that the majority of Greek nouns do not have inherent
sexuality, but acquire it, as it were, by being placed in a specific
noun class?
blessings
Randall
--
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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