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Am I crazy?

 
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Kiri



Joined: 13 Jun 2009
Posts: 471
Location: Latvia/Italy

PostPosted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 8:57 pm    Post subject: Am I crazy? Reply with quote

I am going to use grammatical genders for my new language, (let's call it Tsxa). Am I just a bit crazy or really, enormously insane?
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Cordelier



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PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 4:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@Kiri:
Nay, I do not believe it is crazy. My Elvish Speech (Ûnengwé) is gender-based, and I chose it to be like this because of French, which is my primary language. However, for my Dwarvish Speech (Bathgär), it is not, being based mostly of English, with a lot of modifyings the structure.
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:43 am    Post subject: Re: Am I crazy? Reply with quote

Kiri wrote:
I am going to use grammatical genders for my new language, (let's call it Tsxa). Am I just a bit crazy or really, enormously insane?
Your 'lang's a bit unusual compared to the majority of natlangs, is all. I think lots of conlangs have genders; some have lots of genders.

Is your gender-system going to be sex-based? That is, is it going to have at least one gender whose "semantic core" is one of the following:
1. All females
2. All human females
3. All males
4. All human males
?

Is it going to be a gender system instead of a noun-class system?
For instance, is it going to have at most five genders?
Maybe: Masc, Fem, Neut, Common (or Epicene)?

If it's not sex-based, it's a bit unusual even for natlangs that do have gender-systems.

If a natlang's gender-system isn't sex-based it's probably animacy-based. Is yours going to be animacy-based?

If you're going to have lots of genders, how do you plan to assign a noun to a gender? (Remember, a gender is a concordial noun-class; the noun itself may not be marked for its gender, possibly speakers and addressees just memorize that. But other words -- e.g. adjectives, adpositions maybe, verbs maybe, pronouns, genitives or construct states, etc. -- may have to inflect to agree with the noun's gender.)

Typically, all, or all but one, gender, has a "semantic core" -- certain nouns belong to the gender because of what they mean.

Typically, most of the genders have other nouns that belong just because they sound like they should -- their meaning is not related to the gender's "meaning".

Typically, there's one gender into which any newly borrowed noun that doesn't fit into one of the other genders -- either because of its meaning or because of how it sounds -- will, by default, go.

Are you going to do all that?

Will you have situations where you have to see the noun's whole declension in order to tell what its gender is?

Will you have situations where you don't know a noun's case unless you know its gender (are you going even to have case?)

Willl you have situatiosn where you can't tell a noun's gender unless you know its case?

Cordelier wrote:
gender-based
What does "gender-based language" mean?
The only thing I can think of is a Hierarchical Morphosyntactic Alignment System, where there is an animacy-hierarchy that affects every clause with two or more participants.

Did you just mean "it's a language that has genders"?
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Kiri



Joined: 13 Jun 2009
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Location: Latvia/Italy

PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 12:30 pm    Post subject: Re: Am I crazy? Reply with quote

Firstly, I started this thread (or mini-fuss), because there was a discussion in which everyone agreed that having gramatical gender is more or less useless Smile Now on to the questions (which I love)

eldin raigmore wrote:


Is your gender-system going to be sex-based? That is, is it going to have at least one gender whose "semantic core" is one of the following:
1. All females
2. All human females
3. All males
4. All human males
?


Yes, it is going to be sex-based.

eldin raigmore wrote:

Is it going to be a gender system instead of a noun-class system?
For instance, is it going to have at most five genders?
Maybe: Masc, Fem, Neut, Common (or Epicene)?


I'm not sure of how to understand the first part of the question, but I am having three genders - Masc, Fem and Common.

eldin raigmore wrote:

If it's not sex-based, it's a bit unusual even for natlangs that do have gender-systems.
If a natlang's gender-system isn't sex-based it's probably animacy-based. Is yours going to be animacy-based?


Answered before. I don't really see any point for this conlang being animacy based, although it's an interesting feature, if your conworld has a lot of animate objects (that are normally inanimate)

eldin raigmore wrote:

If you're going to have lots of genders, how do you plan to assign a noun to a gender? (Remember, a gender is a concordial noun-class; the noun itself may not be marked for its gender, possibly speakers and addressees just memorize that. But other words -- e.g. adjectives, adpositions maybe, verbs maybe, pronouns, genitives or construct states, etc. -- may have to inflect to agree with the noun's gender.)


I'm not sure yet. I may have some fun with it. For example, in French "un film" is a masc. word. In Latvian, the same word - filma - is fem. I see it as a fun fact Smile

eldin raigmore wrote:

Typically, all, or all but one, gender, has a "semantic core" -- certain nouns belong to the gender because of what they mean.


See previous. A word like "sword" is more likely to be a masc. word (just my guess, based on Latvian), but again, I might have a great fun with it, and, putting in some made-up philosophy, make "sword" a fem. word or something. Every new word is a separate case in this Smile

eldin raigmore wrote:

Typically, most of the genders have other nouns that belong just because they sound like they should -- their meaning is not related to the gender's "meaning".


That must be so. I don't think there's anything masculine about tables, but "table" (or "galds") is a masculine word in Latvian.

eldin raigmore wrote:

Typically, there's one gender into which any newly borrowed noun that doesn't fit into one of the other genders -- either because of its meaning or because of how it sounds -- will, by default, go.


Having the setting in hand, I don't think that I'll need to borrow some words, but, for my personal use (or for their, if that is necessary), I think every word would be a separate case, because spelling and pronunciation goes in one or another gender. If it fits in none, I think it would be treated as common.

eldin raigmore wrote:

Will you have situations where you have to see the noun's whole declension in order to tell what its gender is?


I think not - I'm going for complicated, but not THAT complicated.

eldin raigmore wrote:

Will you have situations where you don't know a noun's case unless you know its gender (are you going even to have case?)
Willl you have situatiosn where you can't tell a noun's gender unless you know its case?


It could work both ways, I'll see about it.

eldin raigmore wrote:

Cordelier wrote:
gender-based
What does "gender-based language" mean?
The only thing I can think of is a Hierarchical Morphosyntactic Alignment System, where there is an animacy-hierarchy that affects every clause with two or more participants.

Did you just mean "it's a language that has genders"?


I don't know what Cordelier meant by that, but in Latvian, the gender of nouns is a main feature, because as soon as any adjective comes in, you have to align the genders and it might be a lot of trouble for a speaker of a gender-less lang.
I mean, it's mainly wether the adjectives (or other parts of the sentence) must be aligned to the gender of the noun.
Because, for instance, in Vr there are also genders, but theyre secondary and appear only when speaking about animated beings, besides the there are no words that must be aligned with the genders - adjectives stay in their one form for all times, so the lang has genders, but it's not gender-based.
Of course, I may be wrong - maybe Cordelier meant something else by "gender-based".

And, oh, shoot, you made me want to make a thread for this still-just-a-scetch-of-a-conlang Very Happy
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eldin raigmore
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 5:32 pm    Post subject: Re: Am I crazy? Answer: It seems so, but that's good. Reply with quote

Kiri wrote:
Firstly, I started this thread (or mini-fuss), because there was a discussion in which everyone agreed that having gramatical gender is more or less useless
No, it isn't.
Consider:
"Jeff took this picture of Maria in front of the beach-house when he was twelve years old."
"Jeff took this picture of Maria in front of the beach-house when she was twelve years old."
"Jeff took this picture of Maria in front of the beach-house when it was twelve years old."

They mean very different things. The pronoun ("anaphor") has to agree with its antecedent in some way, so you know which one it "anaphor"s (refers) to. The choices are:
don't use a pronoun, repeat the noun;
obviation and further-obviation;
logophoric case (that is, what was its case when it was first used?);
gender.

By far the least exotic and the least wordy is "gender".

(Hence, btw, the persistence (or even the genesis and growth) of a gender-system is supported by the number of clauses in which two participants can be told apart by having different genders. Two genders which sound kind of similar are likely to coalesce if usually only one of them is used in any particular utterance.)

Kiri wrote:
Now on to the questions (which I love)
Great answers!

Kiri wrote:
Yes, it is going to be sex-based.
eldin raigmore wrote:

Is it going to be a gender system instead of a noun-class system?

I'm not sure of how to understand the first part of the question, but I am having three genders - Masc, Fem and Common.
Lots of African languages, Bantu languages in particular, have many, many concordial noun-classes. Africanists tend to call these "noun-classes" rather than "genders". A noun's class tends to be consistent with its first sound or first syllable; and the subject's class-mark (also in some languages the main object's class-mark, if there is an object, but the subject's comes first usually) tends to get stuck onto the verb (and, IIRC, onto adpositions?) and onto adjectives that apply to it, as well as other noun's class-marks being stuck onto adjectives and adpositions that apply to them. So a Swahili (for instance) sentence tends to sound very alliterative.

*(I guess that makes Swahili "gender-based" in the sense you said below.)

So, some linguists won't call a system of concordial noun classes "a gender system" unless it has five or fewer of them.

And some linguists won't call it "a gender system" unless (at least one of) the genders (is) are sex-based.

The typical maximum for an entirely sex-based system is Masc, Fem, Neut, Common. Neuter is for things that are neither masculine nor feminine, Common is for things that are both. (Or things that are both masc and neut, or both fem and neut, or for groups of mixed genders, or for situations where the speaker just doesn't know or just doesn't care.)

Kiri wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
Is yours going to be animacy-based?
Answered before.
Indeed; it'll be sex-based. Will all of the masc and fem probably be animate, or not? Will there be many or few animate common? Many or few inanimate common?.
Kiri wrote:
I don't really see any point for this conlang being animacy based, although it's an interesting feature, if your conworld has a lot of animate objects (that are normally inanimate)
Adpihi is supposed to have three degrees of animacy (inanimate, "free" animate, and "bound animate"); plus binary oppositions of concrete/abstract, living/nonliving, rational/nonrational, sentient/nonsentient. And they're going to be nearly independent of each other.

Kiri wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
how do you plan to assign a noun to a gender?
I'm not sure yet. I may have some fun with it. For example, in French "un film" is a masc. word. In Latvian, the same word - filma - is fem. I see it as a fun fact Smile
Yep.

Kiri wrote:
A word like "sword" is more likely to be a masc. word (just my guess, based on Latvian), but again, I might have a great fun with it, and, putting in some made-up philosophy, make "sword" a fem. word or something.
Typically in natlangs when nobody knows anymore why a noun belongs to a certain gender, )or sometimes even when the reason it belongs is just that it rhymes with most of the other nouns in that gender or starts with the same sound as most of the other nouns in that gender), some such philosophy will be "made up", though often nobody can remember who made it up either.

Kiri wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
Typically, there's one gender into which any newly borrowed noun that doesn't fit into one of the other genders -- either because of its meaning or because of how it sounds -- will, by default, go.
Having the setting in hand, I don't think that I'll need to borrow some words, but, for my personal use (or for their, if that is necessary), I think every word would be a separate case, because spelling and pronunciation goes in one or another gender. If it fits in none, I think it would be treated as common.
I think it would be very unusual to have a gender-assignment system in which every noun got assigned a gender systematically, that is, either because the noun's meaning matches the gender's "semantic core", or because the noun is phonologically similar to most of the other nouns already in that gender. In a real natlang, sooner or later there are probably going to be nouns that have to go in a "default gender". If your conlang happened to get a lot of real speakers, that would happen to your conlang too; though if you just write a few short-stories in it, you may be able to avoid that.

Kiri wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
Will you have situations where you have to see the noun's whole declension in order to tell what its gender is?
I think not - I'm going for complicated, but not THAT complicated.
As you are probably aware, in several languages, for instance Latin, you can tell which declension a noun should go in by saying what gender it is and what it's final sound(s) is(are).
This is the reverse; in Russian, there are some nouns for which you can tell which gender they're in by which declension they're in. Maybe, for instance, they decline their nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases as if they were masculine, but they decline their partitive, comitative, instrumental, and benefactive cases as if they were feminine. (I'm not sure of the exact details of any of those Russian examples; I read them out of either Corbett's book on Gender or Blake's book on Case or something else by one of them.)

Kiri wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
Will you have situations where you don't know a noun's case unless you know its gender (are you going even to have case?)
Willl you have situations where you can't tell a noun's gender unless you know its case?
It could work both ways, I'll see about it.
It's less usual to have case-marking morphology (affixes) on the nouns than to not have it.
But German has some situations where you use a definite article with a noun, and which definite article you use depends on both the case and gender. But at least one case-and-gender combination sounds just like at least one other. If you know the case you can deduce the gender, and if you know the gender you can deduce the case, but if you don't know either one you may sometimes have to look elsewhere to figure it out, or just ask.

Kiri wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
What does "gender-based language" mean? The only thing I can think of is a Hierarchical Morphosyntactic Alignment System, where there is an animacy-hierarchy that affects every clause with two or more participants. Did you just mean "it's a language that has genders"?
I don't know what Cordelier meant by that, but in Latvian, the gender of nouns is a main feature, because as soon as any adjective comes in, you have to align the genders and it might be a lot of trouble for a speaker of a gender-less lang.
I mean, it's mainly wether the adjectives (or other parts of the sentence) must be aligned to the gender of the noun.
Because, for instance, in Vr there are also genders, but theyre secondary and appear only when speaking about animated beings, besides the there are no words that must be aligned with the genders - adjectives stay in their one form for all times, so the lang has genders, but it's not gender-based.
Of course, I may be wrong - maybe Cordelier meant something else by "gender-based".
*(I guess what I said above makes Swahili "gender-based" in that sense.)
I see that much of the language's characteristic "feel" could be heavily influenced by gender in another way than the Hierarchical MSA I mentioned.

Kiri wrote:
And, oh, shoot, you made me want to make a thread for this still-just-a-scetch-of-a-conlang Very Happy

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Cordelier



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PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

@Everyone:
I am speechless, for the fact that my post are probably the shortest of all. Anyhow, what I meant by "gender-based" is that the grammar-style would be similar to French and Spanish as in the following example:

"Le pain est dur." (The [masc. art.] bread [masc. noun] is hard [masc. adj.])
"La balle est dure." (The [fem. art.] ball [fem. noun] is hard [fem. adj.])

I believe that is what I meant. I just did not know how to describe that kind of grammar.
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Kiri



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PostPosted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 12:44 pm    Post subject: Re: Am I crazy? Answer: It seems so, but that's good. Reply with quote

eldin raigmore wrote:
Kiri wrote:
Firstly, I started this thread (or mini-fuss), because there was a discussion in which everyone agreed that having gramatical gender is more or less useless
No, it isn't.
Consider:
"Jeff took this picture of Maria in front of the beach-house when he was twelve years old."
"Jeff took this picture of Maria in front of the beach-house when she was twelve years old."
"Jeff took this picture of Maria in front of the beach-house when it was twelve years old."

They mean very different things. The pronoun ("anaphor") has to agree with its antecedent in some way, so you know which one it "anaphor"s (refers) to. The choices are:
don't use a pronoun, repeat the noun;
obviation and further-obviation;
logophoric case (that is, what was its case when it was first used?);
gender.


Well that particular discussion was about another aspect - asigning gender to inanimate objects (as in French or Latvian)

eldin raigmore wrote:

And some linguists won't call it "a gender system" unless (at least one of) the genders (is) are sex-based.

Well, in my book gender is a sex-based thing Wink

eldin raigmore wrote:

The typical maximum for an entirely sex-based system is Masc, Fem, Neut, Common. Neuter is for things that are neither masculine nor feminine, Common is for things that are both. (Or things that are both masc and neut, or both fem and neut, or for groups of mixed genders, or for situations where the speaker just doesn't know or just doesn't care.)


In Tsxa, Common is a combination of Neuter and Common, I guess.

eldin raigmore wrote:

Indeed; it'll be sex-based. Will all of the masc and fem probably be animate, or not? Will there be many or few animate common? Many or few inanimate common?.


Not all the masc. and fem. will be animated, that's what I meant in the first place - for some weird reason there will be some kind of a gender asignment to inanimate objects. In the ideal case all the inanimate things would divide into three equal groups. Though, there may be many animate common, for there are many things that can be both male and female.

eldin raigmore wrote:

Adpihi is supposed to have three degrees of animacy (inanimate, "free" animate, and "bound animate"); plus binary oppositions of concrete/abstract, living/nonliving, rational/nonrational, sentient/nonsentient. And they're going to be nearly independent of each other.


It's very interesting. Maybe another time for another setting Smile

eldin raigmore wrote:

Typically in natlangs when nobody knows anymore why a noun belongs to a certain gender, )or sometimes even when the reason it belongs is just that it rhymes with most of the other nouns in that gender or starts with the same sound as most of the other nouns in that gender), some such philosophy will be "made up", though often nobody can remember who made it up either.


This is a really fun thing. To try to find some logic, why (in Latvian, that is) "table", "paper", "window" is masc, while "book", "bed" and "sky" is fem. And, by the way, I have not the slightest idea of the reason, why "gate" and "door" can only be used in plural, but that's a story for a different time and place.

eldin raigmore wrote:

I think it would be very unusual to have a gender-assignment system in which every noun got assigned a gender systematically, that is, either because the noun's meaning matches the gender's "semantic core", or because the noun is phonologically similar to most of the other nouns already in that gender. In a real natlang, sooner or later there are probably going to be nouns that have to go in a "default gender". If your conlang happened to get a lot of real speakers, that would happen to your conlang too; though if you just write a few short-stories in it, you may be able to avoid that.


Well, as far as I see know, there would be words that would be pronounced as a masc or fem or com Tsxa word (by the suffix), but, if nothing maches, it would probably go in Com. Smile

eldin raigmore wrote:

Kiri wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
Will you have situations where you have to see the noun's whole declension in order to tell what its gender is?
I think not - I'm going for complicated, but not THAT complicated.
As you are probably aware, in several languages, for instance Latin, you can tell which declension a noun should go in by saying what gender it is and what it's final sound(s) is(are).
This is the reverse; in Russian, there are some nouns for which you can tell which gender they're in by which declension they're in. Maybe, for instance, they decline their nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases as if they were masculine, but they decline their partitive, comitative, instrumental, and benefactive cases as if they were feminine. (I'm not sure of the exact details of any of those Russian examples; I read them out of either Corbett's book on Gender or Blake's book on Case or something else by one of them.)


Either I didn't quite understand what you mean or it's a feature I've never heard of in my two years of Russian studying Very Happy

eldin raigmore wrote:

Kiri wrote:
eldin raigmore wrote:
Will you have situations where you don't know a noun's case unless you know its gender (are you going even to have case?)
Willl you have situations where you can't tell a noun's gender unless you know its case?
It could work both ways, I'll see about it.
It's less usual to have case-marking morphology (affixes) on the nouns than to not have it.
But German has some situations where you use a definite article with a noun, and which definite article you use depends on both the case and gender. But at least one case-and-gender combination sounds just like at least one other. If you know the case you can deduce the gender, and if you know the gender you can deduce the case, but if you don't know either one you may sometimes have to look elsewhere to figure it out, or just ask.


I now have somewhat of a declension system and I have a situation, for example, MASC.ACC being the same as FEM.NOM or the other MASC.NOM being the same as COM.ACC. (Speaking of witch, I have 6 declinitions. Two for each gender)

Cordelier wrote:

I am speechless, for the fact that my post are probably the shortest of all. Anyhow, what I meant by "gender-based" is that the grammar-style would be similar to French and Spanish as in the following example:


Don't stress it. Eldin is famous for his in-depth replies, and I had to correspond to it Smile

Cordelier wrote:

"Le pain est dur." (The [masc. art.] bread [masc. noun] is hard [masc. adj.])
"La balle est dure." (The [fem. art.] ball [fem. noun] is hard [fem. adj.])

I believe that is what I meant. I just did not know how to describe that kind of grammar.


That is, I believe, what I mean too Smile
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Baldash



Joined: 19 May 2009
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 12, 2009 4:10 pm    Post subject: Re: Am I crazy? Answer: It seems so, but that's good. Reply with quote

eldin raigmore wrote:
Kiri wrote:
Firstly, I started this thread (or mini-fuss), because there was a discussion in which everyone agreed that having gramatical gender is more or less useless
No, it isn't.
Consider:
"Jeff took this picture of Maria in front of the beach-house when he was twelve years old."
"Jeff took this picture of Maria in front of the beach-house when she was twelve years old."
"Jeff took this picture of Maria in front of the beach-house when it was twelve years old."

They mean very different things. The pronoun ("anaphor") has to agree with its antecedent in some way, so you know which one it "anaphor"s (refers) to. The choices are:
don't use a pronoun, repeat the noun;
obviation and further-obviation;
logophoric case (that is, what was its case when it was first used?);
gender.

My conlang uses another method: incorporation of the root from the referent. More precisely, the anaphor is the root and some mandatory inflection from the head of the referent, + an anaphor affix, which could be either proximate or obviative. Note that this isn't the same thing as repeating the noun, since the noun could have had much more morphology, like "knower", "knowledge", and "fact/datum" are different nouns, but they share the same anaphor in my conlang.

eldin raigmore wrote:
Kiri wrote:
I don't really see any point for this conlang being animacy based, although it's an interesting feature, if your conworld has a lot of animate objects (that are normally inanimate)
Adpihi is supposed to have three degrees of animacy (inanimate, "free" animate, and "bound animate"); plus binary oppositions of concrete/abstract, living/nonliving, rational/nonrational, sentient/nonsentient. And they're going to be nearly independent of each other.

What is the difference between "free animate" and "bound animate"?
Is the combination rational + non-sentient used for computers?
Could "sentient" combine with "inanimate"?
Is the noun "word" considered abstract or concrete? What about "verb"?
Is "personality" considered living or non-living?
Are animals considered rational or non-rational?

My conlang doesn't have gender as such (i.e. no agreement occur anywhere, nor are the pronouns inherently gendered), but I have inflectional categories for deriving more specific nouns (or other parts of speech), for these concepts:

male
female

sentient
non-sentient animate
inanimate

Those could combine, giving "female sentient" or "male non-sentient animate".
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 6:34 pm    Post subject: Re: Am I crazy? Answer: It seems so, but that's good. Reply with quote

Kiri wrote:
Well that particular discussion was about another aspect - asigning gender to inanimate objects (as in French or Latvian)
Gender is useful if it helps distinguish which of two possible nouns a given adjective or pronoun or, maybe, adposition, or even verb-slot, the speaker means. As long as about half or more of sentences that contain two participants contain participants in different classes, the gender will be "useful".
What's perhaps not "useful" is the decision that the genders are masculine and feminine. But, if all males, or all human males, go in one gender, while no females, or no human females, go in it, that gender's usually going to be called "masculine". And if all females, or all human females, go in one gender, while no males, or no human males, go in it, that gender's usually going to be called "feminine". But thats' just the names of the genders; not their usefulness.

Of course "feminine" can consist of "women, fire, and dangerous things", rather than just "women".

Baldash wrote:
My conlang uses another method: incorporation of the root from the referent. More precisely, the anaphor is the root and some mandatory inflection from the head of the referent, + an anaphor affix, which could be either proximate or obviative. Note that this isn't the same thing as repeating the noun, since the noun could have had much more morphology, like "knower", "knowledge", and "fact/datum" are different nouns, but they share the same anaphor in my conlang.
Well, it makes sense that one anaphor could correspond to many, many antecedents. You really need different anaphors only to distinguish between two (or more) possible antecedents.

Baldash wrote:
What is the difference between "free animate" and "bound animate"?

See e.g. http://www.spinnoff.com/zbb/viewtopic.php?p=707702#707702 and the rest of that thread.

Going by the semantic cores of the genders:
  • Animacy
    • Inanimate -- Not able to move under its own power and control
    • Animate -- Able to move under its own power and control.
      • Free animate -- Able to move itself from one place to another under its own power and control (e.g. an intelligent automobile)
      • "Bound" animate -- Unable to translocate itself, at least not under its own power and control; but able to move other objects (probably), and parts of itself (definitely), under its own power and control (e.g. an intelligent loading-crane)

  • Rationality
    • Rational -- Capable of learning a new language.
    • Non-Rational -- Not capable of uttering and understanding new sentences in even one language.
    Note the fuzziness; for something that can understand and create brand-new sentences in an old language, but can't learn any new languages, it isn't clear whether it's "rational" or "non-rational"

  • Sentience
    • Sentient -- Capable of sensing, and reacting to, facts about the environment.
    • Non-sentient -- Incapable of sensing or reacting to its environment.

  • Life
    • Living -- Able to grow or multiply or spread or reproduce.
    • Non-living -- Unable to grow nor multiply nor spread nor reproduce.

  • Abstractness
    • Concrete -- Tangible and visible.
    • Abstract -- Intangible and invisible.
    Note some more fuzziness; if it's visible but intangible, or tangible but invisible, is it concrete?



Baldash wrote:
Is the combination rational + non-sentient used for computers?
I hesitate to say "no", but it's unusual for a rational thing to be either inanimate or nonsentient, since it is expected to be able to use language. It may quite easily be bound-animate and non-living, though.

Baldash wrote:
Could "sentient" combine with "inanimate"?
Again I hesitate to say "no", but a "sentient" entity is expected be able to react to what it senses; so odds are it's going to be at least bound-animate.

Baldash wrote:
Is the noun "word" considered abstract or concrete? What about "verb"?
Abstract; abstract.

Baldash wrote:
Is "personality" considered living or non-living?
I suppose it depends on whether the culture thinks the notion that personality grows is more important than that it doesn't spread nor multiply (hopefully! a multiplying personality is probably a mental disorder) nor reproduce. I'll go out on a limb and say Adpihi calls it "non-living".

Baldash wrote:
Are animals considered rational or non-rational?
Animate (most are "free-animate", but barnacles and hydra etc. are "bound-animate"), living, concrete, sentient, non-rational.

Baldash wrote:
My conlang doesn't have gender as such (i.e. no agreement occur anywhere, nor are the pronouns inherently gendered), but I have inflectional categories for deriving more specific nouns (or other parts of speech), for these concepts:

male
female

sentient
non-sentient animate
inanimate

Those could combine, giving "female sentient" or "male non-sentient animate".
Interesting!
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Baldash



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PostPosted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 9:10 pm    Post subject: Re: Am I crazy? Answer: It seems so, but that's good. Reply with quote

eldin raigmore wrote:
[*]Life
  • Living -- Able to grow or multiply or spread or reproduce.
  • Non-living -- Unable to grow nor multiply nor spread nor reproduce.

So, is fire "living" in your lang?

eldin raigmore wrote:
Baldash wrote:
Is the combination rational + non-sentient used for computers?
I hesitate to say "no", but it's unusual for a rational thing to be either inanimate or nonsentient, since it is expected to be able to use language. It may quite easily be bound-animate and non-living, though.

Is the ability to generate a voice or text sufficient for it to be "bound animate"?

eldin raigmore wrote:
Baldash wrote:
Is "personality" considered living or non-living?
I suppose it depends on whether the culture thinks the notion that personality grows is more important than that it doesn't spread nor multiply (hopefully! a multiplying personality is probably a mental disorder) nor reproduce. I'll go out on a limb and say Adpihi calls it "non-living".

Maybe the master's personality spreads to his disciples? Or some species has genetic memory?

eldin raigmore wrote:
Baldash wrote:
My conlang doesn't have gender as such (i.e. no agreement occur anywhere, nor are the pronouns inherently gendered), but I have inflectional categories for deriving more specific nouns (or other parts of speech), for these concepts:

male
female

sentient
non-sentient animate
inanimate

Those could combine, giving "female sentient" or "male non-sentient animate".
Interesting!

Well, my labels doesn't mean the same as your labels. My "sentient" means "person", e.g. human, angel, klingon, infomorph, vorlon, and my "animate" includes your "sentient" as well as "animate".
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 25, 2009 1:48 am    Post subject: Re: Am I crazy? Answer: It seems so, but that's good. Reply with quote

Baldash wrote:
So, is fire "living" in your lang?
Fire contained in a hearth might not be. Fire that you are deliberately setting probably is living but not animate. Wildfire is probably animate as well as living

Baldash wrote:
Is the ability to generate a voice or text sufficient for it to be "bound animate"?
Not if it can apparently do so without visibly moving any external part of its body. Ordinarily, though, to generate a sound, an entity must move part of its body, so it might get a bye and get called "(bound) animate".

Baldash wrote:
Maybe the master's personality spreads to his disciples? Or some species has genetic memory?
I just thought of a communicable mental disease.

Baldash wrote:
Well, my labels doesn't mean the same as your labels. My "sentient" means "person", e.g. human, angel, klingon, infomorph, vorlon, and my "animate" includes your "sentient" as well as "animate".
I see.
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kyonides



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PostPosted: Wed Dec 09, 2009 1:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

What if there's some sorceror that creates an undead that's capable of speaking, sensing his environment, let's say he knows when someone could be after him trying to kill him, but cannot feel cold or heat due to the lack of nerves? How would you classify such a creature either in a gender-based, rational-based system or any other?
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 1:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

kyonides wrote:
What if there's some sorceror that creates an undead that's capable of speaking, sensing his environment, let's say he knows when someone could be after him trying to kill him, but cannot feel cold or heat due to the lack of nerves? How would you classify such a creature either in a gender-based, rational-based system or any other?

Well, if he's male maybe he'd be masculine; or if she's female maybe she'd be feminine. And if s/he's human maybe s/he'd be human. In my system, if s/he can walk around s/he'd be free-animate; if s/he can move other things s/he'd be at least bound-animate. If s/he can hear when spoken to s/he'd be sentient (by my conlang's grammar's gender-terminology); if s/he's capable of consciousness, of knowledge, etc., s/he'd be the appropriate gender for that; sim. for will and volition.

But: In some systems, "animate" means "things that breathe", so if the zombie couldn't or didn't breathe, it wouldn't be "animate".

In others, "animate" means "has a soul".

The sorcerer reanimated it? Maybe the sorcerer put a soul back in that body. If it's not the original soul that originally went in that body, maybe it's not human.

If they can't reproduce (I'm assuming they can't?), and can't grow, and can't heal, then they aren't "living" in my system; in which case there's little point in calling them "masculine" or "feminine" instead of just "it".

Why would anyone try to kill someone who was already dead? Isn't "kill" the wrong word here?

Traditionally, zombies are capable of doing manual labor and following commands, but have little volition, and have substandard consciousness and substandard ability to acquire or retain or access or use knowledge. If they are really ordinary living people who have been magically enslaved, then they may gradually recover their mental acuity and their willpower and escape. If OTOH they really are corpses that have been re-animated, I suppose that over time they lose all those abilities; they have no ability to heal, they become weaker, and their minds go.

So, what gender they'd belong to would depend on your magic system, and on your supernatural-creature system, as well as on your conlang.
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