Re: Epicene words

Geoff Horswood wrote:
> On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 15:36:04 -0000, caeruleancentaur
> <caeruleancentaur@...> wrote:
>
> >Perhaps others in the list would share with us some of their animal
> >names, how they derived them and how they distinguish when the name
> >is epicene.
> Epicene words- Xinkùtlan has a whole mass of these!  I think every single
> domestic animal except the guinea pig has words for at least the generic
> animal, male and female thereof, and its young, and a few of the wild
> animals are the same way, despite the fact that the noun class system
> (such
> as is) distinguishes the classes of inanimate, animate and honorific
> rather
> than masculine/feminine.
(snip very interesting and well developed list)
Hmm, I understand that the language doesn't distinguish M/F, but would words
that refer specifically to the M/F of a species still be considered
"epicene"? Maybe I'm not clear on the term.

BTW, a distinction that might be of use: 'female animal that has not (yet)
borne young'

As best I can recall, In Bahasa Indonesia all animal names are epicene
(genderless); so are most human terms. They may be specified by adding the
appropriate adj. for "male, female", which differ for human vs. animal.

orang 'person' (though often used to mean 'a man')
o. laki-laki 'man' -- o. perempuan 'woman' -- same for _anak_ 'child',
saudara (Skt.) 'sibling= bro/sis', kakak 'older sibling'; but adik is spec.
'younger brother'. Many kin terms are spec. M or F: bapak, ibu (father,
mother); suami/isteri 'husband/wife'

As you see, laki2 is 'male', perempuan 'female'; they can also be used as
nouns-- perempuan itu 'that woman', but I suspect that's colloquial or
elliptical, and probably grammar-book "wrong".

All animals are specified with jantan 'M.' and betina 'F' if necessary; IIRC
there are a few words for the young, but mostly they're just anak.....The
only term I can think of that's spec. male is "jago" rooster, esp. a
fighting cock; it also means 'champion'.

Interestingly, certain very common (and native AN) terms are impolite if
applied to humans:
mati 'dead, die' vs. wafat (hum)
bunting 'pregnant' -- hum. hamil
bangkai 'corpse' -- hum. mayat
(Minority and/or non-Islamic groups don't necessarily make these
distinctions)

ObConlang: Kash, not so coincidentally, resembles Indo.:
humans: sinut 'male', luma 'female'
animals: vayi [vaj] 'male', pete 'F.'

But since Kash has gender agreement for (sing.) animates + demonstrative,
it's not always necessary to use the adjectives:

kaç yu 'that M. person', kaç ye 'that F. person'
lopa yu 'that M. lopa', lopa ye 'F' (sheep/goat analogue)

Moreover, for humans, there are some gender-spec. terms, though they're
usually old compounds: kaçut 'man', kaçuma 'woman'

Somewhere on the website I state that there are gender-spec. terms for some
animals, but I haven't developed that (back to the to-do list!!)--they'll
probably only involve the more admired large Cousins, perhaps the larger
"lizards", assuming they have distinguishing features.