Re: Very culture-specific noun classes...

* Jörg Rhiemeier said on 2005-10-16 16:47:27 +0200
> taliesin the storyteller wrote:
>
> > My main language for over a decade, Taruven, has a sister-language,
> > Charan (which I might have barely mentioned before).
> >
> > Animate nouns:
> >     Member of a House
> >     Unknown whether a member of a House or not
> >     Not a member of a House
> >     Incapable of being a member of a House
> >
> > The Houses are powerful subcultures/clans/species with their own
> > laws/customs/lands/professions/esthetics etc. House-less people can form
> > their own Houses and you can leave a House for another but not go back
> > to a previous House. You belong primarily to your House and only
> > secondarily to your family.
>
> Interesting and well worked out.  I like this.
I know details of two Houses as well. The conculturing is waaay ahead of
the conlanging at this point.

> > The last class can further be divided into:
> >     Foreigners, children
> >     Animals (can move by its own volition)
> >     Plants (cannot move by its own volition)
>
> So they'd classify seashells as plants, I guess?  What about eggs?
What is animate or not tends to change with the times. Viruses and
prions have generally always been seen as inanimate, while algae and
mushrooms/fungi are considered to be plants. Everything in the sea is
currently seen as animals, except algae and the most primitive plankton.

Eggs, hmmm... Edible class until provenly a chicken I think.

> > Inanimates also fall into partly overlapping classes, also ordered by
> > highest status to lowest:
> >     Forces of nature (weather, earthquakes...)
> >     Things to do with communication (letters, books, email, pencils...)
> >     Named groups of people, and places (Houses, nations, cities, families...)
>
> I find it a bit odd to classify groups of people as inanimate.
> In Old Albic (my conlang), they are animate.
Imagine a mob of football (soccer) fans after their team have won or
lost an important match... Force of nature, I say.

/snip more inanimates/

> I enjoyed reading this.  You have spent a good deal of thought
> on this.  Keep it up!  BTW: I am considering implementing an
> elaborate noun class system in a daughter language of Old Albic,
> but I have few ideas about it yet.
Unconscious thought, yes. It just crystallized into something I could
write about the other day. That's how all the best features/words are
born after all.

The first thing I learnt about Charan is that it doesn't mark for
number, but has a standalone quantifier |n| meaning "many, much".
Taruven uses the suffixes |an| (dual) |in| (paucal) |en| (generic
plural). So, Charan is a lot less inflecting than Taruven from knowing
that fact alone.


t.

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