Re: Senyecan nouns (for Doug Dee)

In a message dated 10/26/2004 8:09:09 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
caeruleancentaur@YAHOO.COM writes:

>I didn't know that was a use of the word.  All my linguistic life
>I've been calling the inflection of nouns "declensions."  5
>declensions in Latin
. . .
>Mr. Hockett used the phrase "behavior of associated words."  If I'm
>not mistaken, he is referring to the use of words other than the noun
>itself to determine gender, e.g., the definite article.
Yes, I agree.  To put it another way: a declension is a group of nouns that
make all their own case/number forms the same way (like the 1st declension in
Latin, with -a in the nom. sg., -ae, in the gen. sg., etc), while a gender is a
group of nouns that require the same agreements on adjectives, articles etc
(like the feminine gender in Latin).  I was making the terminological point
that your declensions seem to be genders as well.  That is, you have a perfect
match between your declensions and your genders (by Hockett's definition, six
genders), unlike Latin, where there is substantial overlap between, for example,
feminine nouns and first declension nouns, but the two sets are not identical.

>In my conlang associated words are not necessary to see (or hear) the
>similarity between certain words.  The similarity among certain nouns
>is inherent in the noun itself.
Yes, I see.  You have what Corbett would call an "overt" gender system, in
which the gender of every noun is obvious from the form of the noun itself.

Another gender-related question: how do you deal with mixed groups, like "The
woman and the centaur are (both) angry"?  Which form of "angry" would be
used, given that "woman" and "centaur" are in different classes?

Doug