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> Because this role of the genders is hard to replace, even English has retained the gender for pronouns. Only vestigially. He is a single human man/boy (or ma

> Because this role of the genders is hard to replace, even English has retained the gender for pronouns. Only vestigially. He is a single human man/boy (or maybe a pet), she is a single human woman/girl (or maybe a pet or a boat), everything else is it/they. This is very different from what I would consider truly gendered languages, where every single noun is independently gendered (like the knife, fork, spoon example in the article: das Messer, die Gabel, der Löffel) > The second role for the genders was for adjectives. By making the adjectives repeat the gender of the noun to which they applied, when there are no hash collisions it is clear to which nouns the adjectives are connected, otherwise, like for pronouns, the sentences remain ambiguous. > This was important in the old languages, with free word order, where the adjectives were not necessarily placed besides their nouns. Is this really the case? I don't know Latin, but AFAIU, adjectives have to go right next to their nouns. In any case it only helps by 'luck'. If you happen to have multiple nouns with the same gender in your sentence, you get no power to disambiguate. My understanding had always been that it's declension based on case that allows Latin to have a free word order. I can see the value of declension, it's harder for me to understand the value of gender.

kgeist 5y ago
>Is this really the case? I don't know Latin, but AFAIU, adjectives have to go right next to their nouns. I don't know about Latin, but here's examples from Russian (also true for Acient Greek) where adjectives can be found far away from their nouns (word-by-word translations in their original order, just found on Lenta.ru): "Lost his family in fire Russian critizes verdict" ("lost" refers to "Russian") "Found in car minister's corpse moose's seized investigators" ("found" refers to "corpse") "Recreated existing inside planet giants dark ice" ("existing" refer to "ice") Gender and declension help tell what refers to what.
adrian_b 5y ago
In Medieval Latin the adjectives were more frequently close to their nouns, because the writers were influenced by the word order from their native languages. In Classical Latin, e.g. in Caesar or Pliny the Elder, the adjectives may be located either before or after the nouns and frequently with several other words interposed. In poetry, having adjacent nouns and adjectives is more an exception than the norm. In ancient languages, poetry was highly valued, being important both for entertainment and as a mnemonic aid for utilitarian texts. Unrestricted word order was most useful for poetry, allowing any rearrangements of a sentence that were needed to match a desired rhythm. The transition to a constrained word order, accompanied by the loss of many of the grammatical means used to mark the roles of the words, which became redundant with a fixed word order, went in parallel with the diminished importance of poetry.

kgeist 5y ago

>Is this really the case? I don't know Latin, but AFAIU, adjectives have to go right next to their nouns. I don't know about Latin, but here's examples from Russian (also true for Acient Greek) where adjectives can be found far away from their nouns (word-by-word translations in their original order, just found on Lenta.ru): "Lost his family in fire Russian critizes verdict" ("lost" refers to "Russian") "Found in car minister's corpse moose's seized investigators" ("found" refers to "corpse") "Recreated existing inside planet giants dark ice" ("existing" refer to "ice") Gender and declension help tell what refers to what.

adrian_b 5y ago

In Medieval Latin the adjectives were more frequently close to their nouns, because the writers were influenced by the word order from their native languages. In Classical Latin, e.g. in Caesar or Pliny the Elder, the adjectives may be located either before or after the nouns and frequently with several other words interposed. In poetry, having adjacent nouns and adjectives is more an exception than the norm. In ancient languages, poetry was highly valued, being important both for entertainment and as a mnemonic aid for utilitarian texts. Unrestricted word order was most useful for poetry, allowing any rearrangements of a sentence that were needed to match a desired rhythm. The transition to a constrained word order, accompanied by the loss of many of the grammatical means used to mark the roles of the words, which became redundant with a fixed word order, went in parallel with the diminished importance of poetry.