Re: What's a gender?

On Thursday 21 December 2006 20:50, Eldin Raigmore wrote:

> @Mark: I forgot to mention that "genders" are _obligatory_.  That is,
> they are concordial noun-classes such that every noun is in one and only
> one of them, and can't change.
I answer even if this wasn't addressed to me 'cause I liked this part.

My first reaction when I read this: "Hooray! I broke another
universal!"  ;-)

In Shaquelingua, words can change their gender depending on the context.

The two genders are "rational" (people and alike) and "irrational" (all the
rest). --I simplify.

Let's take the word <juca> = person. That is obviously a rational noun.

tul'xeje yōja tekē juca.
[tu4(u)'Zeje wOja: tekE juCa]

tul=xeje   yō-j-a        te-kē         juca-0
DOTA=self  INDEF-SG-INI  IND+PST-INCH  person-INI

= A person has arrived.

The empty (0) INI declension indicates that <juca> is a rational noun.

sōjē jucaē tul, xe val·dopae tsiyō'rja.
[sOjE: juca"E tu4], [Ze: va4.dopa tsiwO:'Xja]

sōj-ē    juca-ē      tul,   x-e      val·dopa-e   tsiyō=rja
GNR-RCV  person-RCV  DOTA,  UNQ-FLX  respect-FLX  OBLG+ATMP=2SG

= You must respect the people.

Here <juca> carries the "ē" RCV declension so it's an irrational noun. And
that's perfectly grammatical because the ideas or concepts are irrational
in Shaquelingua and I used the GeNeRic quantifier to turn <juca> into "the
concept of person".

It also works the other way around:

rebē dadyove pēkla...
[XebE: da.dwove pE.k4a]

re-b-ē      dadyove   pēkla-0
PL-VOC-RCV  immobile  thing-RCV

= You, inanimate things...

<pēkla> (= thing) can only be irrational but, here, it carries the empty (0)
RCV declension of the rational nouns because the VOCative implies rational
entities to which (whom?) I can speak.

So, do I have to put 2 entries in my lexicon for each rational word that may
also represent a concept and for each irrational word that I may promote to
rationality by poetic license? Or else, did I violate another so-called
universal when I built my gender system?

--
==================
Remi Villatel
maxilys_@_tele2.fr
==================

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