Same noun different gender / declension

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mmorris
Posts: 21
Joined: May 4th, 2018, 4:53 pm

Same noun different gender / declension

Post by mmorris »

If a noun has a feminine declension and also a masculine declension, are they considered to be different words?

Second, what term describes there association? Ie. Would you say they share the same root? Etc...
Barry Hofstetter
Posts: 2159
Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Re: Same noun different gender / declension

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

You mean like ἀδελφός and ἀδελφή? Same root, different morphology, different referent, so not the same word, though closely related. In Latin you have fīlius, son, and fīlia, daughter. Invariably a Latin student will confuse them translating one as the other, to which I will say something like, "No, that means female son!" I suppose you could get really technical in the definition and say things like "male offspring of the same parents" and "female offspring of the same parents" but why bother when we have handy English equivalents like brother and sister?
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
mmorris
Posts: 21
Joined: May 4th, 2018, 4:53 pm

Re: Same noun different gender / declension

Post by mmorris »

Barry, that is what I figured but wasn’t sure.

Thanks for the clarification.
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