Re: a question about names

Hello!

On Thursday 30 September 2004 03:12, Etak wrote:

> Hello!
>    Tarnese, my conlang, has no gender at all, which seems
> to work quite well at first glance.  I've just realized
> though, that there is no distinction between whether
> something written, or said, in the third person refers to
> a man or a woman.  Could you please give me some
> suggestions as to how I might fix this problem?
> ---Etak
In Ayeri, I did it like in Mark Rosenfelder's _Elkarîl_ and
used variable vowels for the 3rd person pronouns instead.
First I decided that you have to mark the verb with a
special marker the first time you use the variable, but
because I did not do that I decided that third the variable
vowel in the 3rd person pronouns shall be automatically
assigned (-iyV(t/n), -arV(t/n)). Only when "unsetting" it,
there must be a special suffix on the noun it refers to
(-isiyV(t/n), -isarV(t/n)). The variable vowel is indicated
by a grave accent: -iyà, -arà: He/she reads: layaiyà
(animate); it reads: layárà (inanimate).

And now I have a problem with names. To be excact, with
where to get names. I decided that names can be used for
both genders, except it has some rests of the words for
"boy" and "girl" in it, which makes it automatically
gendered, though this could get lost over the time, too,
since Ayeri only has (in)animate as genders. (The Language
I am working on to get names from, Ambrian, *has* gender,
the usual m/f/n. In naming languages for people and
cities, freaky categories like "edible" are (almost)
useless IMO.)

Carsten