Female and Male Animals (Feature 117)
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Feature Annotation
In most languages, different animal names behave differently. Here we are only interested in sex-denoting elements in names for rarer animals such as (in English) ‘lion’/’lioness’ and productive, non-lexicalized patterns (i.e. disregard unproductive pairs such as English fox-vixen).
We differentiate between words (values 1 and 2) and affixes (values 3 and 4) including a sex denoting element, which can either be preposed (values 1 and 3) or postposed (values 2 and 4). The words can include 3sg pronouns (’he’, ’she’) or nouns (denoting e.g. ’man’, ’woman’).
The question whether the base word, apart from the generic meaning, can also denote only the female or only the male animal (like English tiger meaning ’male and female tiger’ or only ’male tiger’) is irrelevant for this feature.
Additional remarks
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Values
| Value | Value Annotation | |
| 1 | Preposed sex-denoting word | Haitian Creole manman lyon ’lioness’ and mal lyon ’male lion’ |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Postposed sex-denoting word | Lungwa bwê ome ’bull’ and bwê mala ’cow’ |
| 3 | Sex-denoting prefix | |
| 4 | Sex-denoting suffix | English lion-ess |
| 5 | Other | (Please give details in the “General comments” field.) |
WALS No.
(None)
