Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's the first-principles argument: Most people grow up and learn the language in a family group, which has a mix of ages and of sexes. Saying "he" vs "she" here usually cuts the number of people you could be talking about in half, it's very informative, one bit! It will often let you omit the name, or shorten the sentence elsewhere. Whereas always marking what continent you're all living on, or what race you all a…
This sounds like working backwards. Up this thread, people have suggested that the reason is that gender matters more to society than height (this is why we don't announce people's height). When this argument is defeated by race, it switches again to what "seems reasonable". What evidence, beyond "this seems reasonable" is there for this argument?
What do you mean? You mean that racist societies might be expected to distinguish between races with noun classes? Seems to me this might well have happened in some language at some time, or at least a variation on it: distinguishing between those inside the clan, and those outside.
It looks like the sex distinction is the one most commonly reflected in language, which strikes me as empirical evidence that it's generally the most valuable one.
> Common gender divisions include masculine and feminine; masculine, feminine and neuter; or animate and inanimate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender#Gender_of_p...
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_type_of_g...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_class#Languages_with_noun...