Re: Semantic Content of Grammatical Gender?

Well, FWLIW, a part of Tanala and Erava - two related languages in my
Centaurian languages - concerns the way modes and voices are used.

Emotion-related verbs - to love, to like, to hate, to tolerate - in the
passive voice are always prefixed by ke- or kē- .

Stative verbs relating to something being filled or emptied, always take a
postfix -ane.

I've used them in some of the names in the story:
Efēriane - 'efe' - meaning "learning"; 'eri' - meaning "teaching"; '-ane' -
stative ending meaning 'filled'; with 'fēria' meaning "light"; it's a
multilevel pun.
Kēnarant - 'kē-' - emotion-recipient prefix; 'nara-' - to love, to be
seriously smitten; '-nt' - postfix implying worth.  Kēnarant - Amanda in
Erava.

FWLIW.

Wesley Parish

On Saturday 31 January 2009 19:33, Daniel Bowman wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> About 5 years ago, I started experimenting with grammatical gender in my
> conlang, Angosey.  I decided that it would be neat to have a particle that
> could change the entire meaning of a noun.  For example, one particle would
> designate the noun as a physical object, another as an emotion, situation,
> etc.  For example, the noun root "zirath" becomes:
>
>                 au zirath			eye
> 		al zirath			suspicion, appraisal
> 		ay zirath			stillness, watchfulness
> 		sa zirath			observation
> 		in zirath			vantage point
> 		tha zirath		        a far-reaching idea
>
> The idea was to have a purely semantic change that would allow me to coin
> up to six different meanings from one root.  This was meant to oppose
> gender particles in French and Spanish, which have absolutely no semantic
> relationship with their nouns unless the noun is an animal or a person ("la
> table" is semantically no different than "le table").
>
> Then, in 2006, I went to Tanzania and learned Kiswahili.  Kiswahili's
> gender system is superficially similar to Angosey's, but I got really
> frustrated by the way it was being taught.  For example, we would learn one
> gender particle that referred to "fruits and liquids" only to learn that
> "car" was in the same category, and so on.  I think it would have been a
> lot less confusing to have just taught it as a grammatical (rather than
> semantic) distinction, like "le/la" is in French.
>
> I'm running into the same problem with Angosey.  When I coin a new word, I
> have to decide what category a certain meaning should belong to, and it's
> getting to the point where distinguishing via semantics is akin to
> splitting hairs.
>
> Has anyone else attempted a grammar that made strict semantic distinctions?
>  Did you run into similar problems, and if so, how did you solve them?
>
> My mind wanders further, into Sapir-Whorf territory.  If I learn a language
> (or create a language) with strict semantic categories, does it affect how
> I see the world?
--
Clinersterton beademung, with all of love - RIP James Blish
-----
Gaul is quartered into three halves.  Things which are
impossible are equal to each other.  Guerrilla
warfare means up to their monkey tricks.
Extracts from "Schoolboy Howlers" - the collective wisdom
of the foolish.
-----
Mau e ki, he aha te mea nui?
You ask, what is the most important thing?
Maku e ki, he tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
I reply, it is people, it is people, it is people.