All of the romance langhuages, Latin dialects, have a default gender where the distinction is made, which is not always the case.
In Italian, which is the closest of them to Latin, 'the victim' is always la vittima, feminine, regardless of that victim's sex. Or again, 'the dog' is by default il cane, masculine; and even a female dog is likely to be referred to in this way unless its sex is crucial, in which case la cania, female dog, bitch in its non-pejorative sense, is available. Continuing in Italian, gender-based distinctions are often, however, exploited systematically. The feminine, masculine pairs la mela, il melo (the apple, the apple tree), la pera, il pero (the pear, the pear tree), ecc., ecc, illustrate one such usage that children internalize early. Gerhard is certainly correct: In languages that distinguish grammatical gender from sex gender can be used to disambiguate. In English, however, it is too late for this. Attempts to use it would lead inevitably to more sexism warfare. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
