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NGL: Gramatical gender and biological sex

From:Carlos Thompson <chlewey@...>
Date:Saturday, November 14, 1998, 0:48
First I like us to have clear the difference between grammatical gender a=
nd
biological sex.

The gender is a feature of words, mainly nowns, which would give grammati=
cal
concecuencies like gender agreement in other parts of speach.  One common=
 gender
distinction is femenine/masculine in many European languages.  Some other=
 common
disctintion are animatee/inanimate.  As the way I see it NGL has no gende=
r.

The biological sex is a feature of the individuals of some living spieces=
=2E

The femenine/masculine gender disctintion is close to the female/male sex=
uality
but couterexamples would rise.  In languages like Spanish, most woird apl=
ying to
humans and animals amotionally close to humans follows the male=3Dmasculi=
ne /
female=3Dfemenine distinction, either om they are different words, or the=
 same
word with different gender endings:
  el hombre/la mujer (man/woman)
  el toro/la vaca (bull/cow)
  el nin~o/la nin~a (boy/girl)
  el perro/la perra (dog/bitch)

But for those animals with less conetion to humans, the gender is just pa=
rt of
the noun, and even sexual diferenciation is due true adjectives and not b=
y
gender:
  la rata macho/la rata hembra (male rat/female rat)
  el gorrio'n macho/el gorrio'n hembra (male sparrow/female sparrow)
(some masculine nouns would be femeninized: then "la gorriona").

Given those distinctions, there is no real gender in NGL.  There is a
sexual/gender inflexion with the prefixed mu- and fu- as an optional feat=
ure of
the word but is no agreement either in adjectives or in choise of pronoun=
s.

These mu- and fu- prefixes would be used for marking the sex of the
individual(s) a noun is refering to if it is important to us, but they wo=
uld be
no lexicon distinction, this way:
  muduin/fuduin - (man/woman) are just {duin} but the speaker/writer want=
s to
make clear they are refering to either male or female ones.
  mubova/fubova - (bull/cow) are just {bova}.
  muzuen/fuzuen - (boy/girl) are just {zuen}.
  mukuna/fukuna - (dog/bitch) are just {kuna}.

But as we see in natlangs, sometimes the sexual distinction is given by g=
ender
distinction: "el perro/la perra" and some times as different words "el to=
ro/la
vaca".  We will be probably trying to make a language with no cultural ba=
ggage
from natural languages, but we are not creating a conculture, and the way=
 I see
it is that when in natlangs we use different words is because we percieve=
 them
as different animals:
  A cow is an animal which give milk, have calves and are easy to deal wi=
th.
  A bull is an animal which you can fight to, is dangerous if you don't k=
now how
to deal with and is neaded for cows to have calves.
  There are not quite the same animals, even if they are the same species=
=2E  And
if it is culturaly important to a speaker of NGL to make such a distincti=
on they
would be two ways arround:

1) Coin different words:
  *bula/*kawa - bull/cow, as well as {bova} for no sexual distinction.

2) Use the infixation sistem proposed by Stephen:
  bomova/bolova - bull/cow

I prefered this way of coining this kind of vocabulary.
Then, if for any author the perception of the sexes are different, (s)he =
could
use:
  dumin/dulin - man/woman
  zumen/zulen - boy/girl
  kumuna/kuluna - dog/bitch

Then {bomova}, {dulin}, {kuluna} and {zumen} are new words, and not
grammatically featured ones.

--
                                      o_o
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3Dw=3D=3D=3Dw=3D=3D=3D=3D#######
   Chlewey Thompin                              ## ####
   http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/9028/     ## ## ##
------------------------------------------------##-## ##
                                                       ###
   - =BFPor qu=E9 no?
   - No tiene sentido.
   - =BFQu=E9 sentido?  El sentido no existe.
   - El sentido inverso.  O el sentido norte.  El sentido com=FAn, tal ve=
z.  O sin
sentido, como aqu=ED.
    (-- Graeville 2)