Re: The difficulties of being weirder than English

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe" <joe@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 6:03 PM
Subject: Re: The difficulties of being weirder than English


> Peter Bleackley wrote:
>
> > Staving Amanda Babcock:
> >
> >
> >
> >> I guess there's nothing for it but to pursue my ideas for languages
> >> spoken by aliens with a different psychology :)  So, anybody have any
> >> ideas what kind of social organization would lead to a language that
> >> doesn't distinguish between singular and dual, but does distinguish
> >> between singular/dual and plural? :)  Or, perhaps, agrees with odd vs.
> >> even numbers? :)
> >>
> >
> > 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?
>
>
And what about my right hand?