Gender in Pronouns
Saul Epstein 
Tue, 13 Oct 1998 14:01:39 -0500

Hello, all.

I'm starting to work on a new description of the part of the ZC
Grammar that includes pronouns, and I am once again reminded that I
don't like part of it.

As originally stated, pronouns are distinguished in 3 genders in the
3rd person: he/these men, she/these women, and it/these things. On its
face, this distinction seems to prevent the possibility of referring
to a person in the abstract, as it were, without specifying gender,
and to prevent the possibility of referring to a group of people which
includes both genders without generalizing (and excluding one or the
other). The set of affixes looks like this:


      masculine   feminine   neuter
         w           wl        n


I've been thinking about it and, if we can agree this is a problem,
I've arrived at two solutions. The first is to create a fourth
category of distinction, something like "general sentient" which would
refer to a person or people without specifying gender. The set of
affixes might look something like:


            sentient             | non-sentient
  -------------------------------+-------------
  general | feminine | masculine |
  --------+----------+-----------|      n
     w    |    l     |     r     |


The second solution is to allow the neuter to include sentient things.
In other words, a hypothetical person would be an "it" just like an
actual or hypothetical thing. A group of people of mixed gender would
also be "things." So then we would have:


     masculine   feminine   (n)either/both
        w           wl            n


The chief advantage to the first solution seems to be that it allows
greater precision. The chief advantage to the second solution seems to
be that we don't have to adopt any surface changes, only a change in
the way the surface is understood.

I welcome any comments...

--
from Saul Epstein
locus*planetkc,com - www,planetkc,com/locus
"Surakri' ow'phacur the's'hi the's'cha'; the's'pharka
    the's'hi surakecha'."
                                        -- K'dvarin Urswhl'at