Re: Gender in Old Klingon?

At 10:42 PM 6/30/99 -0500, Nik wrote:
>Altho Klingon has no gender, it does have three different plural
>suffixes:
>
>-pu' (beings capable of using language)
>-Du' (body parts)
>-mey (general plural)
>
>I wonder if this is a survival of an earlier stage that had at least
>three genders, corresponding to these plural suffixes?  Has Mark Okrand
>ever said anything about "Old Klingon"?
>
Okrand has alluded to no' Hol (ancient Klingon) in Klingon for the
Galactic Traveller, but not in any detail.  However, gender is
still very operative in modern Klingon.  The distinction is not
between sex, but sentience:

                    Sentient                Non-Sentient

Pronouns (3rd p)    ghaH/chaH                'oH/bIH
Plural suffixes     -pu'                     -mey/-Du'
Possessive suffix:  -wI'                     -wIj

There's no distinction of sex in the pronouns: ghaH means "he"
or "she".  -Du' may be a remnant of the dual number, but now
refers to any number of body parts. -wI'/-wIj are just
representative of the possessive suffixes, all of which
exhibit this behavior (except for -Daj "his, her, its");
note that it is the sentience of the possessed, and not the
possessor, that determines the proper suffix.

So far as the -Du' suffix is concerned, I like to think this
shows something of the Klingon mind-set: body parts are very
important to them!  They make a distinction between parts that
are living (with -Du') or detatched and dead (with -mey).  They
even confer "honorary" body part status on non-living artifacts
that resemble body parts (the handles of a type of pot are
called DeSDu', or "arms", from their resemblence)!

-- Terry