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Any linguistic information experts here that can comment as to whether there is some informational advantage to having random nouns assigned “genders” like Germ
by stallmanite 6y ago
Any linguistic information experts here that can comment as to whether there is some informational advantage to having random nouns assigned “genders” like German, French, etc. do? As in, if we were considering a programming language would all the work involved with matching gendered nouns, adjectives, etc. get us any gains in expressiveness or any other benefit. I love the French language and wouldn’t want it changed, just have always wondered if there’s a “point” to eg a table being feminine.
- patrec 6y agoIt reduces anaphora ambiguity. Compared with gendered pronouns in English (some languages have gender neutral pronouns). Bob and Alice went to the beach, but only he got a nasty sunburn. Bob and Alice went to the beach, but only "it" got a nasty sunburn.
- julesnp 6y agoWhile it could resolve ambiguities when discussing two objects that happen to have different grammatical genders, it seems it would introduce more anaphoric ambiguities when discussing a person and object with the same gender. For example: "George a laissé tomber le livre et son dos était cassé." Which back was broken here, George's or the books?
- patrec 6y agoNo genuine ambiguity here, it's the book (and I suspect that's typical). Even if you increased the ratio of theoretically ambiguous sentences, if that comes at a decrease of actual, practical ambiguity (uintended and unnoticed by the speaker) that's a win.
- leephillips 6y ago“Gender” is the exact term for this; no need for the quotation marks. As an English native speaker, when studying romance languages I never found genders to serve any purpose (other than to make the languages harder to learn). But it’s an interesting speculation.