Categories in Lingua Ignota (was RE: LeGuin (was: a 12thcentury conlang))

Irina Rempt <ira@...> wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Mar 1999, FFlores wrote:
>
> > dantur "king"
> > danteumus "prince"
> > danteuvas "princess"
>
> Is there also "danteus" meaning "child of a king"?
Yes, there is, though it's rarer (you usually talk about
"the prince" or "the princess".

>
> Is there any difference in the *treatment* of princes and princesses,
> i.e. does the kingship pass to the eldest son by default, and only to
> the eldest daughter if there are no sons, or are all royal offspring
> created equal? I'd expect the former, as you wrote that it's a
> patriarchal society.
>
It depends. In general, the firstborn (male or female) gets the
kingship by default, but in many cases the father tends to favor a son
and states so in his will. (The laws of succesion are vague enough to
allow him.) The society is not exactly patriarchal: I should
have said that it has a "patriarchal substrate" -- men are preferred
in high positions, but women can and do occupy them.

In Thaqulm (the land of the Dra'selhadh) there has never been a
female Qlonenqgron (Great Lord... well, _Qlone'nqgravon_ I should
say, "Great Lady"), but there have been a lot of Dhidhenqgrigth
("Little Rulers", hereditary province governors).

(Note the female infix -av-. _Qlonenqgron_ is genderless
but it's assumed to be "Great Lord" unless you infix it for
female gender. This is not like Esperanto -in-, because there's
a male counterpart, -um-. Similar forms of this are found
in _danteuvas_ "daughter" and _danteumus_ "son".)


--Pablo Flores

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