Re: The difficulties of being weirder than English

Staving Joe:
>Peter Bleackley wrote:
>
>>
>>I have an idea for a language, provisionally entitled "the Coastal
>>Language", whose (human) speakers have a deeply-entrenched cultural idea
>>that everything has a natural quantity. Its nouns belong to genders
>>determined by the natural quantity, and each gender has its own number
>>system. The corporeal gender contains items such as body parts whose
>>natural number is considered to be two, so the singular form has been
>>absorbed into the dual.
>
>
>What about Noses, Torsos, Heads, and the like?
That's an interesting question. I haven't entirely decided. One possibility
is that they would belong to a different gender, for things that usually
occur singly. Another is that they would be assimilated to the corporeal
gender by analogy with other body parts. A third is that gender assignment
of such body parts would be irregular. This possibility gains bonus points
for being the most evil ;-)

Pete

Reply