Re: Láadan and woman's speak

Ed Heil wrote:
>
> On Mon, 22 May 2000, Barry Garcia wrote:
>
> > Hmm very good thought there ;). I was thinking the same thing, either the
> > gender system developed later, or it was a scientific language that was
> > adapted by the public. Perhaps the need for a distinction came because
> > people and technology are so linked together?
>
> Hmm... Where do genders come from?  Very good question.  At least in what
> I've read so far, Corbett talks about how pronouns might evolve into
> gender agreement markers, and how nouns might evolve into classifiers
> which might in turn evolve into gender agreement markers, but I don't know
> how a language "chooses" what a gender system is going to look like.  How
> do they grow?  Interesting question!
What's the name of this book again, it sounds really interesting. I'd
like to see some studies into where gender comes from, that would be a
reason to study linguistics in university in a few years, in addition to
the (few) ones I've been able to come up with so far.

--
Robert