Re: feminine, masculine and... ?

On Fri, Sep 22, 2000 at 12:04:33AM +0200, Le cavallero wrote:
> I have been thinking about the possibility for a grammar with pronouns to
> have genders for masculine and feminine for people and animals according to
> natural sex and a third category which serves optionally either for the
> traditional neuter or for such nouns representing a person or animal where the
> gender need not or can not be named.
> Hardly an original thought, probably...
[snip]

Heh. And it was just a few months ago when I posted on this list asking
essentially the same question :-)

So here's the (shameless self-plug for) gender system of my conlang:

Masculine:      used only for males
Feminine:       used only for females
Epicene:        used to refer to both male and female, but without
                specifying which
Double:         used in words that refer to married couples and
                hermaphroditic creatures
Neuter:         neither male nor female (like inanimate nouns, or
                genderless creatures)

Now "double" isn't exactly a particularly good term, but I like "epicene".
The word "epicene" itself means of either/both gender(s), so that's
probably the word you want.

Of course, anybody who has more clue than I do please feel free to step in
and straighten me out :-)


T