Re: Tech Gender (and finally, what does Tech mean?)

>From: Dan Sulani <dnsulani@...>
>On 4 Jan, Danny Wier wrote:
> >there is a true meaning to gender.  Masculine usually indicates initiator
>or
> >the 'sower of seed'; feminine marks completor or 'the grower of seed'
>(i.e.
> >the earth).  Neuter is typically the end product: the 'seed' itself.
>     I like the idea. But what about "products" that may
>(or, then again, may not) turn into initiators or completors?
>Although "child" (seen as a "product") could be neuter
>(as it in fact is in German), what about "boy" and "girl":
>both "results of" and yet both potentially initiators or
>completers? And what gender is the word for adult male
>or adult female, considering that at one and the same time they
>are both "product" of the previous generation and
>initiator/completor of the next one? Or should there be
>separate words for "product-adults" and for "initiator/completor-adults"?
Well 'boy' and 'girl' are of course masculine and feminine because both have
natural gender.  (You never have words like 'maiden', 'virgin' as neuters
like in German _Ma"dchen_, in other words).  'Child' is a strange case; one
of the words is neuter when used to connotate 'offspring', 'seed',
'begotten' -- but masculine (in the inclusive sense) if you're talking about
the meaning of 'child'.

So there might be four genders, if I split the masculine into exclusive
(male only) and inclusive (either gender).  Don't know if I'll do that, and
yes I know it's very sexist (as well as very characteristic of Afro-Asiatic
and Indo-European).

You can't have a 'masculine neuter', for instance.  'Neuter' is pretty much
a generic noun class until otherwise defined.  A 'son' is not only the
results of an action of 'being begotten of a father and born of a mother',
but he himself has the ability in the future to be a father himself.  So the
masculine gender would be used even in infancy.

Fortunately, Jesus Christ has the pronouns 'He/Him/His', not 'It/Its'.

Danny
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