gender assignment

[Roslyn M. Frank]

At 02:36 PM 4/18/99 +0100, you wrote:
>On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Nicholas Widdows wrote:

>[on the introduction of sex-marking into Basque]

>> Most interesting. Are there any cases of it happening on non-o/a
>> stems, e.g. *<zaharro> 'old (man)' or *<txikio> by reinterpretation
>> of the native <-a>?

Although not meeting the criteria you have set up, the following are three
items cited by Iraide Ibarretxe <iraide at ling.ed.ac.uk> in which the morph
<-sa> is imported to set off a "feminine" form from a "masculine" one.
Again, I emphasize that these examples don't correspond to what you are
asking for and in that sense I agree with Larry's statements below.
However, in the examples listed, the sex-marking is expressed by a
non-Basque "sex-marked suffix" that parallels that of the Castilian
<alcalde> and <alcladesa>, the "mayor" and his "wife" even though today we
have women serving as mayors so the <alcaldesa> could be the "mayor"
herself.

Examples:

ad. alargun - alarguntsa "widower/widow"
    jaiko - jaikosa "god/goddess"
    aktore - aktoresa "actor/actress"

Of these three only the second has much currency to my knowledge, although
the pronunciation I've heard is <jainkosa>. It is based on <jain-ko> and
that form on <jaun-goi-ko> "the lord-on-high". The third is a calque of
sorts from Castilian and, therefore, the term <aktore> has already been
"copied" in Euskera. The native word is totally different.

[LT]
>I am aware of no such case. Sex-marking of the o/a sort in native words
>(as opposed to borrowed ones) is still extremely rare, in my experience.
>Sex-marking in native words is not particularly prominent at all, and,
>where it does occur, it is usually expressed either by a lexical
>distinction or by a sex-marked suffix.

Agur t'erdi,
Roz Frank