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

Jonathan Chang wrote:
>
>
>     This whole discussion has me in a humourous mode. I think it is possible
> to someday have a language or two with "gender systems" based on organic
> lifeforms & non-organic intelligences (i.e. AI [Artificial Intelligence] &
> a-Life [artificial-Life]).
>     For instance, the organic/sentient intelligences might be divided into:
>         1) _human/primate_ and then _other animal intelligences_ (cetean,
> feline,             canine, etc.) &
>         2) the machine intelligences all lumped into one category.
>
I like this very very much. Same argument as I had with Barry Garcia's
original proposal: What would cause this system to arise? Government
language reforms? A scientific language that was adopted to public use?
Et cetera? I don't know. That's up to the conlanger who goes ahead and
figures it out in more depth.

To resolve our whole discussion, though, someone just has to prove what
causes gender systems to change. That one simple (or not so simple)
concept would make any arguments that did not agree with it frivolous,
although the whole of this discussion might well be frivolous already..

--
Robert