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Re: Very culture-specific noun classes...

From:Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...>
Date:Sunday, October 16, 2005, 14:23
Hallo!

taliesin the storyteller wrote:

> My main language for over a decade, Taruven, has a sister-language, > Charan (which I might have barely mentioned before). Just today I > realized that Charan must be a language with noun classes, that in fact, > the correct use of noun classes would be a matter of life and death. > > As in all languages related to Taruven, the world is divided into > animates (living and/or sentient) and inanimate (non-living or > non-sentient) objects. Furthermore, Charan marks animates according to > their status, which are from highest to lowest: > > 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.
> 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?
> While an animal or plant are stuck in their class, people can change > class.
Obviously.
> 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.
> Containers (bottles, clothing, bags, skin/leather...) > Tools (including slaves, domesticated animals, machines, electricity...) > Bodyparts > Edible things (including former animate things) > Landscape features (hills, trees, rivers, directions etc.) > Misc. not covered by any of the above (abstracts, emotions...) > > Only a few nouns are assigned to only one class. A tree for instance, > can be considered as for instance > a plant > something edible > a landscape feature > > Every noun has an implicit class, generally the class of the highest > status possible except for the "misc." nouns. > > While the classes for inanimates have changed a lot during history, the > classes for animates have always been very stable. > > I'll detail the system of pronouns later.
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.
> t. (incidentally this also shows how I conlang... structure first, > native morphemes later)
Just like me. For most part, I decide what the structure is first and then find morphemes expressing the distinctions. Only rarely I come up with a morpheme without knowing what to use it for. Greetings, Jörg.

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taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...>