Re: Gender in Pronouns
Saul Epstein 
Tue, 13 Oct 1998 22:32:14 -0500

(Quotes Martina Luise Pachali: Tuesday, October 13, 1998 3:29 PM)

>Saul Epstein wrote:
>>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.
>
>Definitely, the first version would work better, if there has to be
any
>grammatical gender at all.

I wouldn't mind dispensing with it altogether myself. The main
utility I see for it is in conversations in which one wishes to refer
to two people in the third person repeatedly. If one person is a man
and one person is a woman, once the speaker has established the
identity of the people in question, she may refer to them solely by
means of pronouns from then on, if the gender distinction is
available.

That by itself is hardly worth introducing gender. but I hesitate to
recommend removing it, out of respect for the Makers. I've done and
will do enough chipping and hacking in other ways...

>I know several Terran languages (e,g. Finnish
>or Japanese) that do very well without. And  distinguishing between
>sentient and non-sentient would make much more sense. Finnish does
it
>this way, and it works fine. If for some reason you need to be
>offensive, you just use the non-sentient pronons for a person...

Ooh, that does sound effective. Especially for so intellectual a
people as Vulcans...

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