Re: Constructed natlangs

On 2-12-99, you wrote: "But the question is, can women use the "male"
forms?  If there are forms which can be used only by women, but not
corresponding male-exclusive forms, then it would make sense to classify
the female form as a subset of the lang, but if there are male-exclusive
*and* female-exclusive
forms, then it would make sense to classify both as subsets of the lang, or
seperate dialects."

No, persons classified as femlang speakers cannot use the 'common' forms in
Chukchee. As far as I know, in Japanese there are only a handful of words
(like pronouns) that are prohibited to men or women respectively; it seems
more egalitarian, but then again it is the late 1990s and this situation
may have been different before the late Edo. I know that there are also
taboo words and avoidance words in Japanese; the characters in the name of
the current Emperor used to be not used until some years after his death
(this is a Tang-dynasty Chinese custom, if I am not incorrect) and that
certain words that sound like the Sino-Japanese word for death (shi) cannot
be used in 'charged' atmospheres (weddings, birth situations, and in the
modern day, around the birthday boy [or girl]).

It is my understanding that it is not normal to have a masclang and a
femlang in the same language.

As for Eme-ku and Eme-sal, we cannot know the exact situation. Sumerian
didn't spell, it used logograms, and it is partially through loanwords into
Akkadian like /shamallu:m/ < shaman-la(l) + Akk. ending -um that we know
there was an Eme-sal word shaman "pack" equivalent to standard Eme-ku sanga
(the equivalence Eme-sal m = Eme-ku ng is regular). Where words like
shamallum were spelled, they were simply written using the logogram for
pack, noted in romanisation as SHANGAN LA -um (alternatively 'spelled out'
as sha-ma-lu-um). Basically, these oral forms 1. weren't spelled out in
Sumerian except when important (in a joke with a female point of view, for
example); writers seemed to use the same logograms to indicate Eme-sal
forms as they did Eme-ku, and we know these forms by their Eme-ku names
only. 2. Sumerian was a dead language for a long time; we understand little
about dialectical features, how long it was a 'living language,' and to my
knowledge no major study of Eme-sal, analyzing every example, its speaker,
writer, date, and writer's native fluency, has been done.

All that said, it seems most likely that Eme-sal was, in fact, a femlang,
as its speakers are always marked as nonmasculine. Galames, women, and
female deities regularly speak Eme-sal; masculine males or deities do not.
Females do not always speak Eme-sal, but again, this may have to with the
writer, the period, the genre, or the writing system itself.

"Conlang speculation: I doubt that there are any cultures with totally
distinct languages for men and women (as opposed to merely dialects), but
what if ...?  Something like that exists with the Natives.  Except for the
more settled Native societies (many are still nomadic hunter-gatherers),
male adults live in seperate groups, with females, children, and the
elderly living in other groups.  These groups only come into contact for
trading and for the mating season.  Now, these male groups are comprised of
males from many groups, usually related groups.  Anyhoo, in some regions,
males have their own language (with, of course, many dialects), an
exclusive language which no female, nor children, are allowed to know.
Learning this male-language is a part of the rites of passage.  I don't
know any details yet about the Faithful Ones' Male-language, but it's
probably distantly related to Watya'i'sa."

Mmm. Interesting. Kinda of what we see with Eme-sal: there are regular
sound correspondances, but the Eme-sal forms are very archaic and there are
many different vocabulary terms in Eme-sal. I think the Lardil example
shows a masclang that is quite different from its root tongue; as someone
observed, it has an unorthodox pronoun system and its case system is very
odd as well, if I remember my sources correctly.

BB
Only 324  shopping days left before the end of the world!
God was my co-pilot, but we crashed in the Andes and I had to eat him.