Re: Laadan was Re: Posession

On Tuesday 20 May 2003 04:03 pm, Stone Gordonssen wrote:
> >Speaking for myself here, one thing that disappointed me about Láadan was
> >that it seems more like an IAL (well, I guess that's what S.H.E. secretly
>
> Hmm, that was one of the most publicly stated secrets I've encountered.
        What I meant by "secret" was her ten year test to see if a.) Láadan would be
accepted b.) something better than Láadan would come along or c.) people
would go "Ehh..." and forget about it.

> >intended to test) than anything profoundly insightful on the linguistic
> >needs
> >of women. Apart from the base gender being feminine, there really wasn't
>
> Nor did I, but I'm not a woman. The most interesting parts for me were the
> emotion and evidence morphemes.
        Actually, this was the part that interested my wife. Except after thinking
about it for a while, decided that it wouldn't add much incentive to adopting
it. Probably because it would rapidly solidify into social norms after a
while. For instance, you would never really use the "despised" marker unless
you wanted to be deliberately insulting, so that no matter how much you
despise your neighbor, you'd probably use the "respected" marker just as a
matter of course.
        I would be interested in hearing more stuff on this, though. I know that
there are natlangs that have emotion morphemes (and even more that have
evidence morphemes); it would be interesting to hear more. Russian has
diminutives, which are rather close to the emotion morphemes. Names, for
instance, can be mutilated in any number of ways: Ivan -> Vanya (shows some
degree of familiarity) -> Vanushka (much more intimate) or Vanka (derogatory,
but also used in a coursely friendly way).
        Objects are much the same, although I don't know if one can apply a
derogatory diminutive to an object. The prefered way is probably to add a
string of curses. :)

> >distasteful and demeaning to women. If there were a great enough need for
> > a
>
> Or reflective of the faddish face of feminism of the 70s wherein it was
> asserted that all the problems of the world and its subcultures originate
> with men.
        Ah, that's probably it.

> Regardless, Laadan does offer a set of differing posessives, and to reject
> examinig a property/form/syntax because I generally don't like the language
> in which it occurs would say more about me than about the language and/or
> its author. I personally dislike Klingon, both for form and the author's
> stranglehold on it, yet tlhIngon Hol viSov.
        Sorry, I don't know what you were talking about with the
property/form/syntax part. (Maybe you were confusing me with the original
person--now forgotten--who started this thread?) This is something I haven't
studied much, probably because I haven't found it on the web.
        As for Klingon...didn't S.H.E.[1] have some choice words to say on the
popularity of Klingon vs. Láadan? :) It does make one go "hmm..." when you
consider that more women speak Klingon than Láadan (excluding, of course, its
popularity among the Y-chromosome enhanced).
        :Peter
[1] My nomination for greatest combination of initials. Handy, too, since I
keep forgetting how to spell it all. :)
--
Oh what a tangled web they weave who try a new word to conceive!