Re: THEORY: irregular conlangs

Quoth mathias lassailly:
> Dans un courrier dat=E9 du 08/10/99 11:56:46  , Paul a =E9crit :
> > This strikes me as being the remnant of a complex Gender system in
> >  proto-japanese.
> > =20
> >  Is there any truth in that?
>=20
> it's all chinese-rooted classificators.
> except for the last one (-tsu) and i'd bet for -ri (people) and -ka (day).
> and now thinking of it i realize there are tens more. but all of them are=
 SJ.
> rather than proto-japanese i'd say it's prothese-japanese.
>=20
> what do you mean by "gender" ?
> we europeans and else have man, woman and optionally castrated,
> but that's never been the case in japanese.
Grammatical gender doesn't have anything to do with physical gender, at
least not necessarily.  In the European languages we still call them
"masculine", "feminine", and sometimes "neuter", but it's really just a
class system.  How feminine is a door, really (la fen=EAtre, die T=FCr)?  So
by "gender" in this instance, we refer to whether something is a flat
thing other than a runway, tennis court, or pond, or in fact a runway,
court, or pond, or yet some other "gender" of word. :)

--=20
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