Universal #2002

Legacy number: 2002

 Number  1996
 Original  Note that there are no syntactic systems [of gender assignment] [only semantic, morphological, and phonological systems of gender assignment].
 Standardized  Gender cannot be assigned on the basis of syntactic properties of nouns (such as, e.g., that of taking prepositional complements).
 Keywords  gender, gender assignment
 Domain  inflection, syntax
 Type  unconditional
 Status  achronic
 Quality  absolute
 Basis  "over 200 languages" from all over the place
 Source  Corbett 1991: 33

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Discussion
Notes
Assumed reason: "... syntactic specifications on nouns are very limited; nouns do not normally require specifications to indicate which syntactic rules they are subjcect to".
Comment
Frans Plank · 3 Aug 2006
Assumed reason: "... syntactic specifications on nouns are very limited; nouns do not normally require specifications to indicate which syntactic rules they are subjcect to".