Re: Mixed person plurals: gender & the (in/ex)clusive distinction; !Ora

Hello, Remi. Thanks for writing.

This is at least my second, probably my third, reading of your post;
I think I missed some things the first (two) time(s) that deserve
talking about.

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Remi Villatel <maxilys@T...> wrote:
> tomhchappell wrote:
>
> 	[---CUT---] A lot of interesting things...
>
> > I expect (sort-of plan) to have a gender distinction
> > between "Rational" and "Non-Rational" whose semantic core will
> 	[---CUT---]
>
> > I expect (sort-of plan) to have a gender distinction
> > between "Sentient" and "Non-Sentient".  The "Sentient" ones can
> 	[---CUT---]
>
> > I expect to have a three-degree distinction of Animacy.  The
Freely
> > Animate gender will have, as its semantic core, those entities
which
> 	[---CUT---] Remember: Animate, Bound Animate, Inanimate
>
> You'll have to choose one pattern. The three overlap.
In a private post I mentioned previouse threads explaining why I
don't think these fit into a hierarchy.  In a sense, I think they
will overlap in my proposed(?) conculture, which is why they interact
multiplicatively instead of additively when I don't choose between
them.

I did think of making "NonSentient - Sentient - Rational" another
three-degree scale along with
"Inanimate - BoundAnimate - FreeAnimate", but I decided to go instead
for the four-way split "NonSentient vs Sentient"
and "NonRational vs Rational" instead, just admitting that it was
going to be rather rare in the primitive language for nouns to
have "Rational but NonSentient" as a native gender.

>
** See below when referred to /later/

> > People in real-life natlangs do indeed address non-Rational
entities
> > all the time.
** See above when when referred to /later/

>
> > In order to be an Addressee, and entity must either be Rational,
OR:
> > it must be Sentient and at least Bound-Animate.
>
> Absolutely not. A lot of people talk to their computer, insult
pieces of
> furniture which they bumped into, make lectures to their pets, and
so
> on. If you have never done any of the above, you're a rare
animal.  ;-)
>
OK, /later/ is now; look back at the stuff between the "**" lines.
The things you just mentioned were among what I meant then.
Talking to babies, too; babies are Non-Rational Humans.

"Talking to furniture" doesn't really count here; I don't know
exactly what you call that, but it's a kind of minor-sentence
figure-of-speech in which the speaker is being illogical,
and not using the language for a purpose in which
the notion of "addressee" makes any sense.

"Talking to their computer", in the sense you meant it, is
like "talking to furnituer"; but my conculture will have computers,
some of which will qualify as Rational, some of which will qualify as
Animate (both degrees), some of which will qualify as Sentient.

"Talking to Pets", or other trained animals, for that matter, is
exactly the kind of problem for which I think a gendered second
person might be needed.

A pet or a baby is a Sentient Animate Non-Rational entity.
(Well, if the baby or pet isn't mature enough to have
"opened its eyes" yet, it might not be considered Sentient, and I
suppose, for instance, a marsupial which has not matured enought to
be able to let go of the nipple might be considered at best
BoundAnimate, maybe not even that.  A human baby which can see and
hear but can't crawl yet might be Sentient Bound-Animate.)
A dumb-enough but smart-enough computer might be, too.
If the pet animal, or baby in some non-human species, or the
computer, happened to be capable of non-translational automotion
(locomotion?) but not of translational (auto/loco)motion, it would be
BoundAnimate.

> > Why have a 2nd-person gender?
>
> That's a good question. And the answer is mostly (con)cultural. In
> archaic societies where men and women have very strict roles, a
> male/female distinction is very important on the 2nd person, to
remember
> a person to hold his/her rank, and eventually to insult somebody
while
> using the wrong gender toward him/her.
>
> In another society which supports a form of slavery, the bound
animate
> gender could be the gender of the slaves and of the animals. In a
> technological society, the bound animate gender could aswell be the
one
> used to talk to computers and other artificial life-forms.
Ancient Romans had "walking tools" and "talking tools".
"Walking tools" were slaves;
"talking tools" were domesticated animals, livestock.

Had they been speaking my conlang rather than Latin they would have
put slaves in the Rational Free-Animate (Sentient) Living gender
and put livestock in the Non-Rational Free-Animate (Sentient) Living
gender.  (Except eunuchs, geldings, steers, and spays might have been
Non-Living, though they would have still been Free-Animate and
Sentient, and, in the eunuchs' case, Rational.)

Bound-Animate vs Free-Animate degrees of animacy is not going to
distinguish between slave and free in my conlang.  Adult living
rationals are not going to own each other nor be owned by anything in
my conculture.  I expect problems to arise about the ownership of non-
adults whose rationality is newly-minted, and about the possible
ownership of non-living rationals such as artificially intelligent
machines, but I see no overwhelming reason why that would have to be
related to the bound-animacy vs free-animacy distinction, which
really has to do with whether a being can control its own motion from
place to place, or only its own motion-in-place.

>
> Another example is Shaquelingua which has Rational and Irrational
> genders. The Rational applies only to persons and persons-like
(supposed
> to have a personality) and the Irrational applies to everything
else.
>
The "semantic core" of your conlangs Rational gender differs from
the "semantic core" of each of the three
genders "Rational", "Animate", and "Sentient" of my conlang.
"Rational" as first used by the first publishing professional
linguist to insert it into the Animacy Hierarchy was to distinguish
humans who could talk (Rational Humans) from humans who could not
talk (Non-Rational Humans, still higher in the Hierarchy than Non-
Human Animates).  My use of the term is inspired by that use; but the
concept, for which I appropriated the term, is inspired by the
Antique Roman notion of "talking tool".

BTW Many natlangs have a gender distinction between "Usable as a
tool" and "Not useful as a tool".  I have chosen for now to leave
that out this time.  Similarly, many natlangs have a gender
distinction between "helpful for sustaining life" vs "not any use for
sustaining life" (which might get translated, sort of, as "edible"
vs "non-edible" -- except what about oxygen vs. hydrogen-sulfide, or,
water vs. petroleum? -- or it might get translated as "vegetable"
vs. "somehow less than vegetable", which /could/ have the interesting
result that sodium-chloride salt would be a "vegetable", and so would
roast beef.)  I also have, for now, chosen not to use that, this
time.

> However, the genders only show on the 3rd personal pronouns because
I
> didn't think any kind of gender was necessary on the other
pronouns. A
> person always knows what gender he/she is (Rational) and what the
gender
> of an addressee is (Rational, most of the time). Besides, on
Shaquie,
> denying the status of person to somebody is a very serious matter.
You
> can only do it on purpose and indirectly through the 3rd personal
pronouns.
>
As Siewierska says (I think I quoted some of this), it is highly
unusual to have a gender on any person but the 3rd, and highly
unusual to have a gender on any number but the singular.
!Ora is very unusual this way.
As a general "statistical universal", any pronoun which has a 1st or
2nd person form as well as a 3rd person form, if it has gender
distinctions on the 1st or 2nd person form, it will /usually/ also
have them on the 3rd person form.  Also, any pronoun which has a 2nd
or 3rd person form as well as a 1st person form, if it has gender
distinctions on the 1st person form, /usually/ also have them on the
2nd and 3rd person forms.
(I think the above is a strengthened form of Greenberg's Universal
number 44 or 45.)
Also, any pronoun which has forms for more than one grammatical
number, if it has a gender distinction for a higher number, it
will /usually/ also have a gender distinction for the lower number.
(I think the above is a strengthened form of Greenberg's Universal
number 45 or 44.)
In this respect the !Ora Common gender in the 1st and 2nd persons is
unusual.

> > The usual excuse for doing without gender in the 1st and 2nd
persons
> > is "the participants in the discourse already know what gender
they
> > are."
>
> Just what I said.
>
> > True enough if both are "Rational".
>
> > And of course only a "Rational" entity can be the Speaker.
> > But, if a non-Rational hears an utterance, how does it know
whether
> > or not it was the one addressed?
>
> A non-Rational isn't supposed to hear nor think about whether it is
the
> addressee or not. Otherwise, it's very Rational-like.
A trained dog or trained horse, or a speech-recognizing programmed
computer, may be able to recognize commands -- not /new/ utterances,
but still, utterances in a language.  If I have my Labrador
Retriever, my Newfoundland, my horse (ha! I can't afford a horse!),
and my daughter all out at the same time, and I say to one of
them "Come by!", how are they to sort out which one I mean?  (Of
course, a bystander could tell this way; if one of the animals comes
up, I was addressing that animal; if nothing happens except that I
start looking frustrated, I was addressing my daughter.)

>
> > A good clue would be, if the 2nd-person words in the utterance
were
> > marked with a non-Rational gender.
>
> What's the point? Non-rational things don't care, don't react.
See the above.

>
> Let's imagine an ambiguous situation. You're in front of your
computer,
> somebody else is in same room, a window is opened because it's
summer.
> You say to your computer that is slow to react: "Would you please
close
> the window?"
>
> Will the person next to you close the (real) window?
>
> It's very unlikely. There are no utterance without a context.
Imagine this;  I have a voice-input-capable computer.  In it I have
a "Window" open.  I want the window from the room to the outside to
be closed.  I say to my room-mate, "Would you-RATIONAL-FREEANIMATE
please close the window?"  My room-mate knows it's her I'm speaking
to because of all the pragmatic contextual devices you mention
below.  My computer knows I am not speaking to it because of the form
of 2nd person pronouon I used.

Now, instead, I want the software "Window" to be closed.  I say to my
computer "Please you-INANIMATE close the window."  (At the moment I
am leaving aside that my computer is probably Non-Rational since it
may not be able to speak new sentences and may not be able to
interpret new sentences.)  My room-mate knows I am not addressing her
because I am not looking at her, etc.  My computer assumes I must be
addressing it because I used the correct form of 2nd person pronoun,
because I was just using it, and because it does have a "window" open
that it can close; (if there is another computer in the room that
satisfies all the same requirements and can also hear my command,
that other computer may mistakenly think I am addressing it, but that
is a further disambiguation problem.)  The computer assumes that
by "the window" I must mean the most recently referred-to-by-me-when-
speaking-to-it window that it can, in fact, close.

> If you
> actually want to talk to the person, you will look at him and draw
his
> attention if he doesn't look like to be aware that you are talking
to
> him. On the other hand, the person who hear you can see that you
are
> staring at your screen and he will also probably notice that the
> sarcastic voice you used wasn't meant for him. Besides, the person
also
> knows that it's summer, a time when windows remain open.
>
> There can't be any ambiguity as to who or what you are talking.
>
> You don't send letters to non-Rational things to let them move
around.

People in my conculture speaking my conlang might, or might
not, "send letters" to non-Rationals.  Such letters would have to
contain only a choice of formulaic "utterances" from a (possibly
large) pre-set list.  "Sending a letter" to a non-Rational would
depend on the non-Rational being able to "read" it.

They wouldn't send letters to InAnimate things asking them to move
around, but because of their InAnimacy, not because of their
NonRationality.  It's not polite to ask something that can't move to
move.

> So there is nobody (Rational) that can find such a letter and think
that
> it may be for him instead.  ;-)
>
> > Well, what does anyone think?
>
> You have my point of view: very unlikely.
I appreciate your taking the time to write.
I appreciate, as well, your taking the time to read.

I think many of your caveats or quibbles, or whatever word should be
used, have to do with your conlang understanding the Rational gender
differently from my conlang understanding either the Rational, or the
Sentient, or the Animate (either Bound or Free degree) genders).

If I was wrong about that, please re-phrase or otherwise clarify and
write again.

Even if I was right, you still might have reservations I would like
to hear about; in which case, write again.

> But don't let me prevent you
> from using such a system. That could be an odd feature meant to
> disappear from a proto-language, or not. Look at the complex
japanese
> pronouns.
Thank you.

>
> "You, inanimate things, do you have a soul?"  ;-)
Now, that's a /dang/ good question.

If a "soul" is a "personality", then my dogs and cats have had them,
and my babies have had them certainly before they could talk, and
really before they could crawl all that well.  So these Sentient Non-
Rational Bound-Animate Living and Sentient Non-Rational Free-Animate
Living things might have had "souls", since in anyone's opinion they
had observable personalities.  Hey, I think my horses and rabbits had
personalities too.

Do my house and car and computer, which (questionably)
have "personalities", have "souls"?

If a "soul" is a "will", then my car and computer and house don't
have one.  But my pets and babies have -- /boy/, do they ever!
If my car were self-steered, self-propelled, self-controlled by an
Artificial Intelligence, would it have a "soul"?

If a "soul" is the ability to sense, perceive, be conscious, then, do
my trees and flowering garden shrubs have one? Arguably, so, and,
arguably, not so.

If a "soul" is "the spark of life", then, gee, the pond-scum has one,
the virus infecting my nose has one, the "vanishing twin" embryo that
didn't develope beside me in my mother's womb had one ....

-----

Thanks for reading, and for writing, Remi;

and, thanks to everyone else, as well.

Tom H.C. in MI

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