WHY “LA MANO” BUT “IL PROBLEMA”? THE HISTORICAL LOGIC OF GENDER EXCEPTIONS IN ITALIAN GRAMMAR
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55640/Keywords:
Italian language, grammatical gender, exceptions, morphology, etymology.Abstract
The article analyzes the systemic logic behind grammatical gender exceptions in Italian nouns such as la mano and il problema. Examining about fifty cases, it identifies four main types—Greek -ma borrowings, Latin feminine survivals, truncated forms, and semantically fixed genders. The study shows that these irregularities reflect historical continuity and cognitive mechanisms of gender storage rather than random deviation.
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