Re: Homosexuality and gender identity

En réponse à John Cowan :


>This seems to me a methodologically dubious procedure.
So what? Maggel is a typologically dubious language anyway. Its description
is not meant to make it look simpler, that would be destroying all the fun!

>   After all, the
>reason that we call the genders masc., fem., and neut. is that there is
>*some* correlation however rough between the natural genders and
>the grammatical ones.
I said "unconnected" because of the uses. But words like "man", "woman",
"wife" are of the expected gender (but "husband" is neuter :)) ), and there
are only three classes. This explains why I use the
masculine-feminine-neuter names. It's nicer than calling them "class 1,
class 2, class 3".

And that's how the Maggel grammarians describe the language, so you better
not contradict them (unless you want to end up as the principal meal of
their next dinner! ;)))) ).


>And indeed this only makes sense if we suppose that "wife" is naturally
>of feminine gender.
It's indeed of the *grammatical* feminine gender, which just happens to
correspond to the usual natural gender of a wife (same with "woman"). But
what's important in Maggel is that this connection to natural gender is
*always* overriden by grammatical gender if necessary.

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

Replies