Re: Gz^rod|in (Some grammar now)

> - nouns relating to _past_ are masculine, e.g.
>   history, yesterday, ruin
> - nouns relating to _future_ are feminine, e.g.
>   hope, devastation, tomorrow;
> - a masculine abstact noun derived from a verb
>   indicates commencement, e.g. masculine
>   _The go(ing)_ means, the leaving;
> - a feminine abstract noun derived from a verb
>   indicates completion, e.g. feminine _The
>   go(ing)_ means, the arriving.
Worf-Sapir could go crazy with this one ;-).  It seems like a pretty good
gender system--how does it relate to syntax?  My lang, Yivríndil, has no
gender at all, but its ultimate ancestor Proto-Yindil had these five
genders:

Masculine humans (ending -a)
Feminine humans (ending -e)
Masculine animals and "static" natural objects like rocks, mountains,
etc, and manmade objects (ending -u)
Feminine animals and "dynamic" natural objects like rivers, trees, etc.
(ending -o)
Abstractions (ending -i)

By the time you get around to Yivrindil, it's all pretty messed up
though, and the gender system is no longer productive.  There's still
lots of visible pairs though, e.g. _edda/eddé_ for father/mother, or
_bur/boro_ for bull/cow.  In this last example, _bur_ comes from *boru,
and the final -u has caused the raising of the previous vowel and then
disappeared--a very common feature in Yivríndil animal names.

BTW, I haven't bothered to paste in your description of the phonology and
orthography, and I'm not familiar with Australian dialects, so I'm not
sure how it should be pronounced.  However, I did notice that your
orthography is very esoteric, and would probably present a stumbling
block to reading for most people.  That's not necessarily bad, since
there's other natlangs and conlangs that do far worse, but you might want
to keep in in mind.  Also, I have major issues with using consonants
(other than y and w) to represent vowels, and Greek letters like lambda
are consonants in my mind.  You might consider a system using Greek
letters, but ones that correspond to their sounds--i.e. upsilon for the
sound in "but", and theta/delta for voiced and unvoiced th.  Or for that
last one, why not thorn/eth?

It's your conlang, so do what you want, but those are my suggestions.

Jesse S. Bangs   Pelíran
jaspax@juno.com  jaspax@yahoo.com
"I wish that I could stop playing Superman
I have decided to let the case drop
I'm no Superman" --Blindside