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

>From: tomhchappell <tomhchappell@...>
>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
>Subject: Re: Mixed person plurals: gender & the (in/ex)clusive distinction;
>!Ora
>Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 20:11:55 -0000
>
>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:

> > > 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.  ;-)
>"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.
um, in Chinese, there's the verb _majie_ (to curse the street), since one
doesn't want to take their anger out on those close to one's-self, they go
outside and _majie_.

source: _They Have A Word For It: a Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable
Words & Phrases_ by Howard Rheingold.


>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.
'translational'?


> > 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
why?

you don't want to give those slaves ideas.


>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,
  that linguist has a thing against mimes, I'd hazard a guess.


> > 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.)
would the bystander care?

would the assembled care whether or not hte bystander understood?


> > 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?"
I thought you said that you don't use the "rational/sentient" genders in a
sentance when you're talking to the individual.



> > 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.
if its non-Rational, why would they expect it to respond?

or is it like writing letters to Santa?


>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).
it would help if you gave us a tasting of that particular aspect of your
conlang.

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