Gender (was: Láadan and woman's speak)

At 4:36 pm -0400 25/5/00, Nik Taylor wrote:
>Carlos Thompson wrote:
>> Well. English has now-a-days and important classification system in its
>> grammar: count and mass nouns.
>
>You could even go so far as to say that English has FOUR genders, but
>very restricted in their effect, showing up only in determining the
>"multitude adjective" and pronouns.  They are:
>
>1.  Masculine - uses "he" and "many"
>2.  Feminine - uses "she" and "many"
>3.  Neuter-Count - uses "it" and "many"
>4.  Neuter-Mass - uses "it" and "much"
Nick may be interested to know the traditional dialects of the Devonshire
area of England do have a pronoun differences marking the four genders
above.

Neuter count nouns are referred to as 'he' [i:] (subj) and 'un'  (<-- Old
Eng. hine) (object), just like masculines; but neuter mass nouns use 'it'
(unstressed: 't), e.g.
Pass the loaf - he's over there.
I like this bread - 'tis very tasty.

But there is a difference between count nouns & masculines in the
possessive forms; "his" is "he's" [i:z], but "its" is "of un", this:
    referring to John:  he's book
referring to a hammer: the handle of un

The feminine sing. pronoun, BTW, is the invariable 'her', with silent 'h'
and final 'r' pronounced the American way.

Ray.

PS - I'll be setting Conlang to nomail later today, so I'll probably not
see any reply.   Be back on 5th June.





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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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