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That's not grammatical gender. Most people can distinguish between persons and nonpersons and map that onto the correct pronoun or relativizer to use. But in G

by brettp 2y ago

That's not grammatical gender. Most people can distinguish between persons and nonpersons and map that onto the correct pronoun or relativizer to use. But in German the girl you met yesterday is neuter, and the burger you ate yesterday is masculine, and you need to know that to form a grammatically correct sentence about them.

thaumasiotes 2y ago
That is grammatical gender. Grammatical gender is a property inherent to words that requires agreement by other words. There's no other definition. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inanimate_gender https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inanimate_gender . You failed to distinguish the concepts even in your own terms; a girl is a person, and a burger isn't, and you need to know that to form a grammatical sentence about them.
- brettp 2y ago
  The point is: grammatical gender (noun classes) are arbitrary. Even though a girl is a person the gender of a girl (das Mädchen) is neuter in German. You need to know that grammatical gender to form a grammatically correct sentence - you do in fact need to say "it" ("er") in your sentence referring to the girl you met yesterday. A girl is person and a burger isn't, but in German a girl is an "it" and a burger is a "he".
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    Noun classes aren't arbitrary in general. Conflation of random objects with male and female life forms is arbitrary. But it's more arbitrary than is typical for noun classes. Taking sex-based gender distinctions for our example, we can observe that Chinese speakers aren't able to correctly choose between the English pronouns he and she, despite the fact that this distinction isn't arbitrary in the slightest (and Chinese speakers routinely make it themselves in other contexts!). The reason is simply that their native language doesn't make the distinction, not that the distinction is theoretically difficult to make.

by brettp 2y ago

thaumasiotes 2y ago

That is grammatical gender. Grammatical gender is a property inherent to words that requires agreement by other words. There's no other definition. Compare https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inanimate_gender https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inanimate_gender . You failed to distinguish the concepts even in your own terms; a girl is a person, and a burger isn't, and you need to know that to form a grammatical sentence about them.

brettp 2y ago
The point is: grammatical gender (noun classes) are arbitrary. Even though a girl is a person the gender of a girl (das Mädchen) is neuter in German. You need to know that grammatical gender to form a grammatically correct sentence - you do in fact need to say "it" ("er") in your sentence referring to the girl you met yesterday. A girl is person and a burger isn't, but in German a girl is an "it" and a burger is a "he".
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  Noun classes aren't arbitrary in general. Conflation of random objects with male and female life forms is arbitrary. But it's more arbitrary than is typical for noun classes. Taking sex-based gender distinctions for our example, we can observe that Chinese speakers aren't able to correctly choose between the English pronouns he and she, despite the fact that this distinction isn't arbitrary in the slightest (and Chinese speakers routinely make it themselves in other contexts!). The reason is simply that their native language doesn't make the distinction, not that the distinction is theoretically difficult to make.