Re: Gender

On Sat, 24 Oct 1998 14:21:15 -0400 Baba <fikhduv@...>
writes:
>I am involved, as a therapist, with persons who're physically
>intersex and others who cross gender lines in other ways.
>
>When I looked at language I found that a "gender neutral" pronoun
>(EG "hir" etc) although intended to be such often ended up being
>used as a "third gender" pronoun (IE of a person neither male or
>female). So perhaps 4 pronouns are needed; male, female, neither
>male or female, and "any"; the later for use with collectives,
>generics, or where the gender of the individual is unkown.
That's exactly what i have in Rokbeigalmki :)
There are four third-person pronouns for each singular and plural.
The singular ones, for instance, are:

iz = she (female)
oz = he (male)
uz = it (neuter)
uhz = s/he (neutral)

_Uz_ is used for inanimate objects, and _uhz_ is used for animate objects
whose gender is unknown.  It's "plural", _uhmz_, "they-neutral", is used
for both multiple unknowns and for mixed male and female groups.
They're also used as gender-markers on nouns.  For instance,
_mald_ means "a human"
_uh-mald_ also means "a human", but has the neutral marker _uh-_
redundantly tacked on for some reason.
_o-mald_ is "a man", and
_a-mald_ is "a woman".  This is irregular - it should be _*i-mald_.  The
linguistic-evolutionary BS ( ;) ) i came up with to explain it is that it
originally was _i-mald_, but the _i-_ prefix shifted _i-_ >> _y-_ [j@] >>
_ya-_ >> _a-_.
_u-mald_ is some kind of neuter human, like an android i guess.

-Stephen (Steg)

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