Re: My languages

Nik Taylor wrote:
>Adam Walker wrote:
> > So what gender are infants and the mute?  If they aren't concidered
>sentient
> > are they gender 4???
>
>Yep.
>
> > That'd be pretty perverse, but the Utakassi are
> > primatives, aren't they?
>
>I wouldn't call them primitive.  They're not at our level of
>development, but they certainly have metal.  Bronze age or so.
>
>Lots of languages place infants in non-human categories.  For that
>matter, I've even heard native English speakers refer to infants as
>"it".  And unborn children are often called "it", especially by
>pro-abortionists.  It's all a matter of where you consider the quality
>of "human" to begin.  The Kassi consider that to begin with the
>acquisition of speech.  In our culture, most people consider it to begin
>either at birth or some point before birth.
So there's strong correlation between what gender a word is placed in and
what chategory the corresponding thing is in in Utakassi? I mean, Germans
certainly don't consider girls inanimate, yet _Mädchen_ "girl" is neuter.

                                                    Andreas

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