-4

Are there other languages, besides Latin, where a gender of a noun is determined by its genitive case ending?

  • 8
    The gender of a Latin noun is not determined by the genitive case ending. nauta, nautae is masculine while victima, victimae is feminine. ratio, rationis is feminine while leo, leonis is masculine. – brass tacks Mar 20 '19 at 17:50
  • 1
    As Sumelic says, this isn't actually true in Latin. – Draconis Mar 20 '19 at 18:03
  • 4
    In Latin (and perhaps in other languages), there is a tradition of choosing the genitive case form as part of the citation form for a noun. This doesn't have anything to do with the function of genitive case, just with the facts that almost every noun has such a case form, and that the stem for the genitive was usually the one that appeared on most other case forms -- unlike the nominative singular, which frequently diverged from the genitive stem. Many consonant clusters were lost in the nominative: mens, mentis; cor, cordis; honos, honoris; etc. – jlawler Mar 20 '19 at 18:54

2 Answers2

2

The idea of a "genitive case ending" isn't particularly universal; it shows up mostly in Indo-European languages. And no IE language I know of (including Latin) actually shows gender specifically with the genitive ending.

But if you relax your requirements a bit, many Eastern Bantu languages mark gender on the genitive particle. For example, in Swahili:

  • mama wa mtoto "the child's mother", gender #1 (individual people)
  • miti mya mtoto "the child's trees", gender #4 (groups of plants and things that extend)
  • kitabu cha mtoto "the child's book", gender #7 (artifacts created by humans and small versions of things)

Note that, unlike in IE languages, the genitive marker agrees with the thing being possessed rather than with the possessor.

Draconis
  • 65,972
  • 3
  • 141
  • 215
  • 1
    I'm not familiar with the grammar of Swahili, but if this is a separate word, it seems like it's an example of a possessive marker agreeing in gender with the head of the surrounding noun phrase (the possessed word is the head), which shows up in Indo-European languages as well: Latin pater meus "my-M father" vs. mater mea "my-F mother" or French son père "his/her-M father" vs. sa mère "his/her-F mother". The difference is just that Latin and French don't use this kind of strategy when the possessor is non-pronominal. – brass tacks Mar 20 '19 at 19:23
0

For German, it can be said that nouns that have -(e)s in the genitive (singular) are not feminine, i.e. they are masculine or neuter. Feminine nouns have no case endings in the singular. Also, neuter nouns have -(e)s in the genitive*, whereas masculine nouns have one of -(e)s, -(e)n, -(e)ns (Mannes, Jungen, Namens).

However, names have -(e)s even if feminine in those contexts where names have an ending (Marias Stimme, die Stimme Marias vs. die Stimme unserer lieben Maria).

* One exception: the neuter noun Herz has -ens in the genitive.

So the following relationships hold:

  1. feminine ↔ no case ending
  2. neuter → -(e)s
  3. -(e)n or -(e)ns → masculine
  4. -(e)s → masculine or neuter

Cases 1 and 3 are those where it can be said that the case ending determines the gender.

David Vogt
  • 447
  • 4
  • 8