Re: Relative Genders-Comments

Brian Betty <bbetty@...> wrote:
>
> And what about a truly alien language, one that humans could only figure
> out on paper like a math problem ... with multiple genders relating to
> time, shape, or place-referents? I-now speak of him-then and the like. What
> a nightmare - and would make for some fun, fun work. An alien language
> worthy of Cherryhian work would be fun to build - I especially like the
> shape-referents. Tall gender, round gender, distance factors ... you'd have
> way fun explaining why a species would want to indicate relative distance
> so much it's built into their brains!
I don't get what you mean by "distance factors". Do you mean
different gender for nearby things and faraway things?

As for the shape-referents: there are some Native American languages (*)
(for example, Nootka) which indeed use different genders (or classes)
for objects according to their shape and size. I don't know whether
or not to call these "genders", but I understand that these class
markers are compulsory.

(*) also some Eastern Asian languages.


--Pablo Flores

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