Re: Metrical Stress, Feet, Syllables, Genders, Email Servers etc.

En réponse à Philippe Caquant :


>Maybe that's we KNOW about computers (and programs;
>the notions of computers and programs being very
>intricated among common users), but not how we FEEL
>it.
Nonsense. It's just that since French doesn't have a neuter gender, we are 
obliged to assign gender to everything, even things strictly inanimate, and 
that makes it easier for us to personify things. But it doesn't say 
anything about the things themselves being animate.


>Is it ? I thought it was 'computador'.
It's "ordenador" in Castillan Spanish.

>  Wow, if
>computers (l'ordinateur, masculine) were female in
>French, that would certainly completely change our
>relation to them. (True, we sometimes say 'la
>machine', but that more often refers to hardware).
I doubt it. Don't overestimate the influence of language on people. Also, 
since in French the default gender is always masculine, it is unlikely 
computers would ever have been considered feminine.

>It is quite usual to hear phrases like 'Il me dit des
>trucs bizarres', 'Il veut pas faire ce que je lui
>dis', 'Il est plante', 'Il m'insulte' (*), etc, about
>the computer, or rather, the whole (hardware +
>software). That means that the computer is perceived
>as something nearly human, even if everybody agrees of
>course that it is not.
Of course, but even if you call it "it", you can do that too. I hear it 
everyday at work :)) .

>  You can have a dialog with the
>computer, you give 'him' orders, 'he' is supposed to
>obey, or at least to explain you why 'he' cannot, or
>doesn't want to.
You can say all that with "it" in English and it doesn't sound any more 
personifying than using "he". The fact that your L1 is French blinds you 
for this.

>  That's why I think that a 4th gender
>would be justified for it. Could be something like
>"het" for instance (a mix of 'he' + 'it'); 'het' also
>being an article in Dutch.
"het" is both the neuter article and third person pronoun in Dutch, and 
thus means plainly "it" and is strictly inanimate. It's not a mix of "he" 
and "it" for instance. And funny, enough, computers in Dutch use the 
animate article "de" :))) (hehe, Dutch gender is often very tricky :)) ). 
That doesn't mean computers have a gender. If you need to use a personal 
pronoun to refer to them (since Dutch doesn't have a genderless animate 
third person personal pronoun), you just say "die": "that one". Dutch has 
not problem using this demonstrative pronoun as a kind of epicene animate 
third person personal pronoun.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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