Re: Vocalic Language, take two

Paul Bennett wrote:
> I'd guess
> that these people are hunter-gatherers, or possibly in some other scena=
rio where
> food is harder to come by that in the modern world?
Maybe, I'm not entirely sure yet.  I got the idea of "edible" from
Dyirbal, which has a gender (#3) for "non-flesh food", while meat is
included in their "other" gender (#4) - actually, that only applies to
"Traditional Dyirbal", the "Young People's Dyirbal", the speach of those
who are have been exposed to western civilization, have dropped #3 and
placed those in #4.  Incidentally, gender one is male human and other
animate, while gender 2 is female human, birds [they believed that birds
were the souls of dead women and girls], danger, fire, fighting.

It appears that the "edible" genders in my lang came from a "subgender"
of the non-edible ones, compare:
me- (non-edible animal)
ngime- (edible animal)
t=E4- (other - includes plants)
ngit=E4 (edible plant)

Perhaps ngi is an old word meaning "edible".

> I'm seeing a few mentions of "trial" number around and abouts.  Is this=
 a
> feature in many natlangs?
Pretty rare, but it does occur in some Polynesian languages.

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