Re: Láadan and woman's speak

Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> Robert Hailman wrote:
> > Building on that, perhaps technical words borrowed heavily on natural
> > terms, and the distinction was lost in the vocabulary and had to be made
> > up by a new distinction, so the government of what ever culture this is,
> > or maybe the scientific community, seeing as this society is
> > technology-driven, decided that this could be best served by replacing
> > an "archaic" gender system with one that suited there society better.
>
> More likely, simply technology existed for thousands of years.  By that
> point, whatever derivational methods were used to name their devices was
> long forgotten, and they terms have become non-analyzable.  After
> thousands of years, a new gender system could've easily evolved.
Quite possible, but what I want to know is what would cause a gender
system to change so dramatically. I could understand a small change or a
simplification, but for such a large change to happen gradually seems
rather unlikely. Not impossible, but what would cause such a gender
change? Also, how can a gender system change to the one mentioned
previously gradually? Maybe a electronic/non-electronic distinction and
such slowly were added, and then the old (and irrelevant) system would
be phased out.

I also find it doubtful that a culture would adopt a new gender system
just because they couldn't understand what gave nouns their gender under
the old ones, more likely that would cause them to drop gender almost
entirely. Or maybe I've misinterpreted you.

--
Robert