XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien   
   From: jcb@inf.ed.ac.uk   
      
   On 2009-07-06, Christopher Henrich  wrote:   
   > In article <11q7i6-pck.ln1@morgen.pointerstop.ca>,   
   >  Derek Broughton  wrote:   
   >> > In other words a meerkat may bleat at a rhinoceros, but it still remains   
   >> > a rhinoceros. --[Kalahari Bushman saying of my own recent invention]   
   >>   
   >> Surely "it" remains a meerkat?   Perhaps, I'm missing the point...   
   >   
   > Well, you see, in the Kalahari language, verbs agree in gender with   
   > their subjects; "meerkat" and "bleat" had feminine gender whereas   
   > "rhinoceros" and "remains" had masculine gender.... [1]   
   >   
   > Actually, I had the same hesitancy about construing that saying. But I   
   > think that making the antecedent of "it" be the rhino is acceptable.   
   >   
   > [1] Bullshit, of course. But I would not put it past the Kalahari to   
   > have something even stranger in their grammar. For that matter, English,   
      
   Not bullshit, as it happens. It's not as simple as masculine and   
   feminine, but in San languages (or at least the one I've read anything   
   about), verbs do agree with their governing noun (which is not   
   necessarily the subject). In the case of !Xoo, there are five noun   
   classes with which the verbs and adjectives agree. However, I don't   
   know how the agreement would work in this case - maybe both verbs   
   would agree with rhinoceros.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)