Re: Gender in Old Klingon?

Fakaltin=E1tas na<Terrence Donnelly>:
> However, gender is
> still very operative in modern Klingon.  The distinction is not
> between sex, but sentience:
Ah yes, you have a point there.

> -Du' may be a remnant of the dual number, but now
> refers to any number of body parts.
You know, now that I think about it, that IS a rather obvious theory -
body parts frequently come in pairs.

> note that it is the sentience of the possessed, and not the
> possessor, that determines the proper suffix.
In much the same way as the number of the possessed, not the possessor,
determines Spanish mi/mis, etc.

> 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).
OH!  That makes a lot of sense, Okrand merely said that using -mey with
body parts implies "scattered", and if body parts are scattered, they
must be separated from the body, thus dead, thus inanimate!  Perhaps at
one time the suffixes were:

           Singular Dual Plural
Animate    -'       -Du' -pu'
Inanimate  -j       ?    -mey
(I theorize -' and -j based on the possessive suffixes wI'/wij, li'/lij,
ma'/maj, ra'/raj

The use of -mey with animates, tho, is a bit puzzling.  Perhaps it was
an extension of the use with body parts, which subsequently became
archaic (but surviving in poetry)

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