Re: Another question: genders

At 9:03 am -0400 11/8/00, John Cowan wrote:
>On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
>> Nik Taylor wrote:
>>
>> > Padraic Brown wrote:
>> > > Just poking my head in: what negative connotations does ambivalent
>> > > have for you?
>> >
>> > To me, it connotes things like "indecisive", "wishy-washy", etc., but,
>> > perhaps that's just a personal feeling?
>>
>> It *can* have those connotations, yes.
>
>Which is a pity, because it leaves no word left to do the original
>work of "ambivalent", namely "having strong feelings in two opposing
>directions at the same time."  "Odi et amo", *that* is (or was) ambivalence.
That certainly was the original meaning (and many would say still is the
proper meaning) of ambivalent.  Certainly "wishy-washy" is about the last
adjective one would think off in describing Catullus' feelings towards
Lesbia!  At first it was passionate love - then, when this elegiac couplet
was written it was passionate love & passionate hatred at the same time -
and neither passion was indecisive.  He would've wished it otherwise but,
as he said, it was like being wracked on a cross (a sight not unfamilar to
Romans).

Yep - ambivalence properly denotes the co-existence in one person of two
opposing attitudes to the same object.  I guess if one is using 'natural'
gender in one's conlang and one has a gender labeled "ambivalent" it would
denote a person who exhibited both strong feminine emotions and also strong
masculine emotions - which, of course, begs the questions as to what really
are feminine as opposed to masculine emotions and vice versa.

Maybe 'ambivalent' is not such a good word to denote a gender because of
its original (and still used) positive meaning.

Ray.


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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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