Re: CHAT: I'm back

Hello!

On 8/25/05, Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...> wrote:
> Julia "Schnecki" Simon wrote:
> > Now I'm looking into noun class systems. I'm envisioning a system with
> > a handful of inflectional classes and a somewhat larger number of noun
> > classes; each noun would be assigned to a certain inflectional class
> > based on its phonetic structure, and to a certain noun class based on
> > its meaning.
>
> Cool.  Genders can be fun.  :)
I'm German, and I have foreign friends who are learning or have
learned the language. So I know all about fun with genders. ;-)

> My Uatakassi has 7 genders in the
> standard dialect.  Sentient Female, Sentient Male, Sentient Epicene,
... interesting; so far I had only thought about whether I should
distinguish between "masculine" and "feminine" (and a bunch of other
classes) or whether I should simply have a "common" gender to cover
both, but it had never occurred to me that it's possible to have all
three... :-)

> Animals associated with people [domesticated animals and certain
> agricultural pests], animals not associated with people, other animate,
> inanimate.  The distinction between the last two is somewhat vague.
> Gold is animate, copper is not, for example.  :)
Is there a (con)cultural reason behind this? IIRC, in Sumerian stars
and mountains are classified as animate because they're associated
with deities, and deities are obviously animate. So, is there perhaps
a spirit/deity/whatever associated with gold but none associated with
copper; or are noble metals considered to be higher in the animacy
hierarchy than common metals; or is gold traditionally used in certain
artifacts with moving parts but copper isn't; or...?

> Things that can move on
> their own, like wind and fire and insects, are considered animate, while
> things that do no are often - but not always - considered inanimate.
> Nouns referring to social/cultural entities are animate (e.g.,
> "language", "word", "city", "law")
I hope I'll still remember this when I've come up with a nice noun
class system and want to add some quirks or irregularities... ;-)

Regards,
Julia

--
   Julia Simon (Schnecki) -- Sprachen-Freak vom Dienst
_@"  schnecki AT iki DOT fi / helicula AT gmail DOT com  "@_
si hortum in bybliotheca habes, deerit nihil
                                        (M. Tullius Cicero)

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