Re: Láadan and woman's speak

Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> Robert Hailman wrote:
> > Scientific and tech terms definitely, but I wouldn't consider it likely
> > that the whole gender system would be reformed in this time.
>
> Sure it would.  After millennia have passed, any pre-existing
> gender-system could be lost, and a new gender-system could've evolved.
> A gender system involving things like "electric" I could see developing
> if electricity were used for thousands of years.
Maybe, we can't say for sure, can we? We'll have to wait a few thousand
years to find out. :o)

>
> > Over a long time frame, I'd imagine it would be
> > more likely for no changes to occur to a gender system than a change
> > this radical.
>
> Not necessarily a change, but a replacement.  English has lost
> grammatical genders in only about a millennium, I don't know how long it
> would take genders to evolve, but within a time-frame of several
> millennia, I wouldn't be surprised if it were possible for genders to be
> lost and recreated a couple of times.
This is definitely possible, but a society that got rid of it's gender
system wouldn't likely adopt a new one. I'm not educated in this area at
all, are there any known examples of a gender system appearing in a
language that had previously lost it's genders? I'd accept your argument
much more readily if it's been known to happen, because to me, and maybe
it's just my lack of education in the field showing, the speakers of a
language that got rid of a language wouldn't accept a new one. A lot of
English speakers can't comprehent why other languages have more
complicated gender systems, and probably would resist having one in
English, too.

Also, some languages lose gender distinctions, others gain more. But
what are the odds of a language losing one system and simultainously
gaining another? I say simultaniously because I'd imagine the electrical
and synthetic distinctions would come in as the male/female
disctinctions were lost.

--
Robert