Re: Láadan and woman's speak

"SMITH,MARCUS ANTHONY" wrote:

> On Thu, 25 May 2000, Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> > You could even go so far as to say that English has FOUR genders, but
> > very restricted in their effect, showing up only in determining the
> > "multitude adjective" and pronouns.  They are:
> >
> > 1.  Masculine - uses "he" and "many"
> > 2.  Feminine - uses "she" and "many"
> > 3.  Neuter-Count - uses "it" and "many"
> > 4.  Neuter-Mass - uses "it" and "much"
>
> I've even read a (a really old) book that suggested that English has SEVEN
> genders. In addition to your four, he separated the inanimate uses of
> "she" (like a car or boat) and "he" (don't remember his examples, and I
> usually don't use he of inanimates), and the use of "it" with babies and
> sometimes young children.  A bit excessive in my opinion.
Could he come up with good syntactic reasons for doing that?  I can't
imagine that he could legitimize that based on morphology.

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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