Grammatical features / gender power & prefix derivation

[Richard Wordingham]

On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 01:18:40 +0000
Richard Wordingham via CLDR-Users <cldr-users at unicode.org> wrote:

> On Mon, 1 Mar 2021 06:50:35 +0800
> Kip Cole via CLDR-Users <cldr-users at unicode.org> wrote:
> 
> > My understanding of TR35 section 16.1 is that when deriving the
> > grammatical gender of a “power” (like “square meter”) or
> > “prefix” (like “milligram”) the basic operation is to strip the
> > power and/or prefix and derive the gender of the base unit (“meter”
> > in this case).
> > 
> > If my understanding is correct, then looking at the Section 16.1:
> > <deriveCompound feature="gender" structure="power" value="0"/> <!--
> > gender(square-meter) ←  gender(meter) --> <deriveCompound
> > feature="gender" structure="prefix" value="0"/> <!--
> > gender(kilometer) ←  gender(meter)--> Is there any circumstance
> > whereby “value” could be anything other than “0” ? Is there any
> > circumstance where the power or prefix themselves would form part of
> > the gender determination? (Based on the above I assume not, but
> > confirmation would be helpful).  Looking at the locales for “root”,
> > “de” and “fr”, all of them have “value=0” for “power” and
> > “prefix”.  
> 
> I think you need something like a Tigrinya or Sanskrit locale to give
> you any confidence.

It looks as though the simplification works for Tigrinya.  The
compounds tend not to univerbate in Tigrinya as it maintains the Semitic
aversion to compounding nouns, but inanimate singulars lack
obligatory gender and numbers above one happily take the singular.

Looking closer to hand, how is assimilation of numbers to the counted
object to be handled?  It has effects much like gender.  An English
example is "an amp" v. "a milliamp"; in a receding style of Welsh, we
have "deng medr" (10 m) v. "deg cilomedr" (10 km).

Richard.