Re: Writing Systems and Biscriptal Children

On Wed, 1 Dec 1999 20:04:49 +0100 Irina Rempt-Drijfhout
<ira@...> writes:
> Valdyan only has gender on the pronouns, not the nouns; there is
> masculine, feminine, common and neuter. Masculine and feminine are
> only used for male and female sentient beings, as well as for
> animals
> when their gender is important (like a stallion you want to put to
> stud).
> If a person's gender is not important, the common gender is used
> (like "get a doctor and tell him/her...")
> A group made up of both men and women, or of people whose gender is
> not known or not relevant, has common gender.
>    Irina
.

This is pretty much the same way that Rokbeigalmki genders work - 4
pronouns, (oz / iz / uhz / uz = he / she / (common) / it), where the
sexual genders are restricted to animate beings that you know what their
sex is.  If gender isn't important, is unknown, or doesn't fit into the
male/female distinction that well (plants, microbes, genderless
deities...), the common gender is used.  only inanimate objects (and
abstract concepts) get the neuter gender.  Genderless Deities would get
the neuter gender also, except it's considered insulting, so the common
gender is used.
All nouns are inherently either common or neuter gender, depending on
whether they're alive:

mald = human
uh-mald = human of indeterminate sex (redundant)
pyet = rock
u-pyet = inanimate rock (redundant)

However, for some strange reason, the female marker _i-_ mutated into
_a-_, probably under distinguishing influence from _i_ "and".  So all the
other prefixes have the same vowel as the pronouns, except for "iz / ish
(non-subject) / a-".  _i-_ is still used sometimes in literature, though.


-Stephen (Steg)
 "eze-guvdhab wa'hrikh-a tze / "zhoutzii wa'esh," i eze-mwe."

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