Re: A wacky language

paul-bennett wrote:
>
> On Tue, 03 Feb 2004 22:25:42 -0600 Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>
> wrote.
>
> >Nouns have changeable gender, and not an issue of semantics, as in
> >having a single root for "boy" and "girl"
>
> Let me be sure I've parsed this correctly.
>
> For a single root |boi-| and gender markers |-m| (masculine) and |-f|
> (feminine), the words |boim| and |boif| mean "boy" and "girl".
>
> Is that what you meant? It's the pattern from Elamite, and IIRC Burushaski
> (and also AFMCL Thagojian), but it's not magnificently weird.
No, that's what I meant to avoid.  That is, noun gender could change,
perhaps for syntactic reasons, but it would *not* be a matter of
semantic changes, as in boy/girl.  Perhaps, say, there's 5 genders,
numbered G1-G5, by their usage in indicative sentences.

In subjunctive sentences, G1 -> G2, G2 -> G3, G3 -> G4, G4 -> G5, G5 ->
G1
In interrogative sentences, G1, G3 -> G2; G2, G4 -> G1, G5 -> G3 (but
sometimes G4)
In negative sentences, G1 -> G3, G2 -> G2 or G4 if there's another G2
noun ...

Or a kind of "gender sandhi"  :-)  Things like G1 -> G3 if the next noun
is G3

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
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