Re: Gender in conlangs (was: Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad))

Staving Costentin Cornomorus:

> >
> > Let's call them (temporarly) "subjectal" and
> > "objectal". If you re-read my
> > previous posts making the substitution, I think
> > everything will become clearer.
>
>Mot especially - the problem presents. Subject
>and object are intimately linked with case.
>
>If you want to construct a noun system whose
>nouns change gender depending on their role in a
>sentence, I think you would do to come up with
>better names!
I came up with a similar system a while ago.
http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0308A&L=conlang&P=R11509

> > If it doesn't work, re-try with
> > "gender 1" and "gender 2". These
> > are just (badly chosen) *names.*
>
>To be honest, I'll just stick with "subjective"
>and "objective", replacing with animate/inanimate
>or similar as necessary.
I used active, stative, passive, instrumental and receptive.

> > These grammatical genders are meant to separate
> > what is or looks like a
> > person from what doesn't.
>
>
>Well, like I said, neologisms certainly have
>their place. If you're using them to describe
>existing subject matter (like if you come up with
>the term "spanners" when talking about words like
>"and"), you'd do us all a favour to also use the
>accepted name (in this case, conjunction).
>
>Such speculation can be very fun when you've
>discovered enough of the language's culture to
>begin to see how native speakers would describe
>their own language.
Suffixes in Khangaþyagon are called segunakar, literally "follow-parts".
There are also terms for the different ranks of segunak (modsegunak,
densegunak, radsegunak etc.) relating to their realtive position following
the stem.

Pete

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