In this paper, I argue that the temporal connective prima (‘before’) is a comparative adverb. The argument is based on a number of grammatical facts from Italian, showing that there is an asymmetry between prima and dopo (‘after’). On the ground of their divergent behaviour, I suggest that dopo has a different grammatical status from prima. I propose a semantic treatment for prima that is based...

â  â  â  reasons of differences in grammatical opinions among the ancients â â â â â â â  ryadh alsawad * â  marzieh ghorbankhani ** â  â  abstract â â â  the most important characteristic of the rules of arabic language is their extent and diversity, so that they are difficult for learners to manage and learn. there are different reasons that play role in formation of this diversity. some reas...

Previous research has shown that speakers of gendered languages think about and categorize nouns in accordance with the noun’s grammatical gender. Past studies have often used languages that do not mark grammatical gender as “genderless” control languages. We examine whether this characterization of non-gendered languages is in fact correct, by examining whether native speakers attribute gender...

Many languages have a grammatical gender system whereby all nouns are assigned a gender (most commonly feminine, masculine, or neuter). Two studies examined whether (1) the assignment of genders to nouns is truly arbitrary (as has been claimed), and (2) whether the grammatical genders assigned to nouns have semantic consequences. In the first study, English speakers’ intuitions about the gender...