LL-L "Morphology" 2002.07.29 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 29.JUL.2002 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian L=Limburgish
 LS=Low Saxon (Low German) S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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From: "Mathieu. van Woerkom" <Mathieu.vanWoerkom at student.kun.nl>
Subject: morphology

Last week, Gabriele Kahn wrote:

> yes, surprisingly, gender is still relevant in Dutch!
> Take a simple sentence like: "This is the door.
> It is open". In Dutch that would be: "Dit is de
> deur." And NOW you need to know the gender in order to
> find out whether you should say "Hij staat open" or
> "Zij staat open" (i.e., "he" or "she" is open)!!

Yes indeed, but nowadays the common Dutch speaker
(at least in the Netherlands) wouldn't know whether a
door is masculine or feminin. It's easy to see it is not
neutral (neutral = het), but what then?

A door (as with all other masculine/feminine words)
is nowadays usually called 'hij', so: "Dit is de deur,
hij staat open", even though a door is actually feminin!
I know that a 'door' is feminine, because these genders
are still always used in Limburgish: "Dit is de deur,
zie sjteit aope".
By the way, the easy way to find out the gender of a
Limburgish word, is to look at the indefinite pronoun
(a, an):
M                       F                       N
de sjoon (shoe)         de mert (market)        't sjtök (piece)
eine ('ne) sjoon        ein ('n) mert           ei (e) sjtök

In Dutch, these words all have 'een ('n)'.

Regards,
Mathieu

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Morphology

Mathieu,

While I'm sure that what you said above is true most of the time (and
"door" is also feminine in Lowlands Saxon [Low German] and German), I
wonder if it isn't "dangerous" to assume that there is complete
agreement between Dutch and Limburgish with regard to gender
assignment.  I know that in this respect there is a lot of agreement
between Dutch, Lowlands Saxon and German, but not total agreement (not
even among all LS dialects).

Cheers!
Reinhard/Ron

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