"organic/non-organic intelligence gender" <was Re: Ladanandwoman's speak>

Robert Hailman wrote:
> To resolve our whole discussion, though, someone just has to prove what
> causes gender systems to change.
Dixon gives an example of gender-acquisition from Yanyula, an Australian
language which has recently acquired gender, by the influence of
neighboring gendered languages.  One of the genders is "food", marked by
the prefix ma-, which is related to the noun _mayi_, "edible vegetable
food"; this language has ergative inflections marked by -Ngu [N = eng],
when the "food" prefix is added to a word in the ergative, it becomes
muNgu-, from ma- + -Ngu with the vowel assimilating.  Originally, a noun
phrase in the ergative would've consisted of _mayi_ in the ergative
followed by a specific noun in the ergative, and later _mayiNgu_ became
a prefix _muNgu-_ (thus, a sort of double-marking of case, obConlang:
Watakassí does that with number, both the gender prefix and the noun
itself mark pluralization, tho in different ways)

Of course, in the case of Yanyula, it was merely acquiring a distinction
which existed in neighboring languages, but still, it shows that gender
can evolve in an un-gendered language.

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