Although I am not a native English speaker, here is my personal opinion on the question. I will check tomorrow at my office with a native speaker. By « indeterminate », wich is of course a very personal term, I mean that the noun has no specific gender or could be as well as masculine or feminine. the king (indeterminate: my dictionary does not specify that this noun is of the masculine gender, but queen is specified as feminine: I wonder why this difference?) - he the mother (feminine) - she the stone (indeterminate) - it the cat (indeterminate) - it/he/she the tiger (indeterminate) - it (he?/she? In Japan it is quite trendy after all to have a tiger or a lion as pet!) the Black Beauty (indeterminate) - she/it the boat (indeterminate) - she/it the HMS Victory (feminine) - she the thought (indeterminate) - it the child (masculine or feminine) – he/she the witness (indeterminate) - he/she the guest (indeterminate) - he/she the person (indeterminate) he/she As far as I can trust the English grammar book of my wife (in Japanese, so I may have misunderstoud part of the explanations given in it), are of the masculine gender in English the names of male human being, as well as generally speaking “war, death, sun” when there is a poetic personification. Are of the feminine gender the names of female human being, as well as generally speaking “earth, see, moon, peace” when there is a poetic personification, and “ship, car”, when there is an affective personification. Are of the neuter gender the things; for animals, neuter is rare, because there is often an affective personification. Generally speaking “HE” refers to the masculine, “SHE” to the feminine, “IT” to the neuter, but as we have seen, it is possible that because of personification “HE” could refer to words like “SUN, WAR, OCEAN, ANGER”, and “SHE” to words like “SPRING, PEACE, SHIP, EARTH, SEA”. (“IT” is used in the case of indetermination, to refer to something already expressed or as subject of impersonal verbs). So generally speaking, we have : MASCULINE Names of men (he) Names of male animals (he) FEMININE Names of women (she) Names of female animals (she) NEUTER Names of things (it) (but names of boat and countries are generally feminine, thus “she”) Names of animals (neuter with the pronoun IT, especially if it is a name of species or if the gender is not of any importance like in: “this bird lays it eggs in the sand” or “the mouse ran back in its hole”). Of course, I would have many questions to ask to a native speaker, if it was still a decent hour to phone somebody here in Japan. Anyway, hope it will help. Please tell me if I wrote something wrong ! ===== Andre-Paul Itel apitel@yahoo.com Hic tamen hanc mecum potera requiescere noctem Fronde super viridi. Super nobis mitia poma, Castaneae molles et pressi copia lactis; Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant, Majoresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com
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