Tikuna update: genders

[asakiyume]

The Tikuna language has five genders (these aren't genders like people having genders; these are just linguistic genders--like how French and Spanish have two** and German has three. Speaking of, it's fascinating to me when Spanish and Portuguese genders don't agree, like for "computer," which is masculine in Portuguese but feminine in Spanish. And "tree" is the opposite: masculine in Spanish but feminine in Portuguese.)

Anyway, Ticuna's five genders are feminine, masculine, neuter, salient, and nonsalient. What's interesting to me is that the prefixes for these only come in three variations: one for feminine, one for masculine, neuter, or nonsalient, and one for salient. It's a taxonomy that would make Borges smile! There are things in the feminine category, things in the masculine/neuter/nonsalient category, and things in the salient category. (Things owned by the emperor would be .... let's guess salient.)

... This information comes from the 2020 online course, not from work with my tutor. She, however, continues to teach me fun words and phrases, like michi pucuum na muum--the cat is afraid of the rain.

**Not so fast, Asakiyume--and readers! mount_oregano points out that actually Spanish has five genders (see her comment here; she links to an explanation.)

Comments

[sovay]

What's interesting to me is that the prefixes for these only come in three variations: one for feminine, one for masculine, neuter, or nonsalient, and one for salient.

That's so interesting!

[asakiyume]

Right? We talk about female being the marked state and male an unmarked state, and here the language does it.

[amaebi]

Do "salient" and/or "non-salient" have meaning, aside from being names of grammatical classifiers?

[lokifan]

This is my question too!

[asakiyume]

See my answer to amaebi for how it works!

[asakiyume]

Yes, if something's salient, it's the focus in the sentence. It could be what we'd call in grammar the subject, but it could also be the object. For example, if I say, "Denis picks up the book" in English, Denis is the subject and the book is the object. Without context, those things have equal salience. But if Denis is given a salient marker (Denis [and not some other person] picks up the book), we know that's the focus of the sentence. But the object could also be the thing that's important (Denis picks up the book [and not some other thing].) Japanese particle は (written "ha" but pronounced "wa") is a salience marker (or, when I was learning Japanese, it was called a topic marker), and particle が is a subject marker, and I remember how hard it was to learn that those two things weren't necessarily the same.

[amaebi]

Thank you! Korean does the same thing, as a marker, for “what’s the sentence focus.”

[asakiyume]

It's so cool what languages choose to do with particular words and grammar and what they don't!

[lokifan]

Ahh, I see. V interesting! So it's sort of a way of giving emphasis/lack of emphasis? Do you use it much, or would you mostly use masculine/feminine/neuter?

Doing emphasis/salience grammatically is pretty difficult in English, I guess. You can use the passive to turn an object into the subject as way of saying it's this thing, but otherwise I feel like it's mostly pronunciation (emphasis & intonation) and then italics for written English.

[asakiyume]

I don't know: with my tutor, I've just been learning really simple phrases where emphasizing one thing over another, so it hasn't come up much. But it definitely is used a lot in Japanese, and from the examples Denis Bertet gives, I feel like it probably gets pretty heavy use in Ticuna.

And yeah, in English in everyday speech, it's definitely something where we use extra stress on a word.

A thing I think about in that regard is how in Japanese there's a whole verb that you can add to your sentence to indicate that you've gone and done something that maybe wasn't advisable/well thought out, but too late now! And to express that in English, we have to do what I did in the previous sentence: use a phrase like "I've gone and [verb]"

"Atarashii kuruma wo katte shimaimashita"
I've gone and bought a new car"

--the grammar expresses a feeling of finality and regret.

[lokifan]

Ah, so interesting! Thank you!

[amaebi]

Now you're reminding me of Hebrew verbs. So beautiful.

[asakiyume]

^_^

[heleninwales]

That's interesting. So the Tikuna language uses an actual marker for the thing that English does with stress and Welsh does with word order.

[asakiyume]

Exactly! So wonderful the flexibility and inventiveness of how language lets us say what we want, with nuance.

[raven]

Oooh! We have this in Hindi and I never knew what it was called. At home we refer to it as the "unfortunate implications" construction.

[asakiyume]

I just love-love-love it! And what a great name for it.

In Hindi, how do you use it? In Japanese, the verb is shimau--you just take that on to the joining form of another verb to make the construction.

miru = see
mite shimatta/mite shimaimashita = [OMG]I saw it [and now I can't not see it]

iu =say
itte shimatta/ itte shimaimashita = I went and said it.

[raven]

Ah! I think it's both a different form of construction and a slightly different meaning. We use the word "bhi", which you can to any other word in the sentence. So if I do that in an English sentence it looks like this:

We-bhi booked a nice hotel room [we did, even though you said you would, you bastard]
We booked-bhi a nice hotel room [we did book it, man at reception, so please check again]
We booked a nice-bhi hotel room [This room is absolutely filthy]
We booked a nice hotel room-bhi [yeah, you're right, we should've gone for an AirBnb instead]

[asakiyume]

Ahhh, I love this more and more 😂 I'm going to read these to my husband--what a GREAT little word.

[asakiyume]

So I did just read it to him, and he got very in the spirit of things and was doing it with stress in English:

We booked A nice hotel room, not ten!

We booked a nice hotel room, not a slaughterhouse!!

I'm guessing bhi could work in those situations too, right?

[raven]

Yes! Perfect! Not quite the first one because Hindi doesn't have articles, but I could imagine it with "one" in a similar way: "They bought one-bhi pizza" to mean "but there were twenty people at the party!!"

[ethelmay]

An Airbnbhi? :)

[cmcmck]

English only manages three and one of them seems to have gone out of fashion.

Hungarian is ungendered which rather annoys an old friend of ours, Laura, who is Hungarian speaking and happens to be a trans woman.

[asakiyume]

Linguistically English *only* genders people and animals, and does it based on sex. Maybe it would be better if the term for this category of linguistic marker wasn't called "gender" because it doesn't really have to do with that thing called gender that we talk about all the time relating to people. And I mean, I can see Laura caring, personally, to be identified as feminine/female in Hungarian, but it can't really matter to her that that computers and tables don't get gender markers, right?

ETA: Or okay: it's true we sometimes imply gender to things by using gendered pronouns (like "she" for a ship), but the nouns don't go around marked with a gender all the time the way they do in Romance languages--that's the linguistic distinction I'm trying to make, but I'm not a linguist, so I'm probably not using the right terms.

[squirrelitude]

The distinction I've heard is personal gender vs. grammatical gender. In Spanish, most nouns have a single grammatical gender, but (some) nouns that refer to a person take on the personal gender of the person. That's where you get a bit of a confusing gray area between the two concepts.

(I took a couple linguistics courses in college but don't have any training beyond that.)

EDIT: I saw mount_oregano's comment, but rather than struggling through semi-technical Spanish, I went here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender_in_Spanish It's interesting, I don't think this is the way I would divvy up the notion of linguistic gender. It feels like a category error to say "a word of common gender can change its gender". There are clearly two levels here, and "gender" is being used as the name for both levels! Here's how I would put it: There are three gender-formations of words in Spanish (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and six gender-patterns of how words have those gender-formations applied (masculine-only, feminine-only, epicene, common, ambiguous, and neuter).

[asakiyume]

I like that way of explaining it very much!

[squirrelitude]

Hah, I just hope it's correct, then. 😅

[asakiyume]

Well it makes pragmatic sense, regardless about what linguists would say! There are only three genders in play (and really only two and an artifact), but, as you say, several ways of using those.

[sartorias]

I so wish I could go back in time and take linguistics!!!

[asakiyume]

We really need time turners!

[sartorias]

!

Speaking of, (blush) I found a book I borrowed from you, Paths to my Africa n Eyes, which I will get in the mail to you. (This is why I should never borrow books)

[asakiyume]

Are you sure it's mine? If so, it's one I didn't have deep attachment to because I don't remember it at all, and it's probably very good it ended up with you!

[sartorias]

It has a note on it in my handwriting "Return to Francesca."

But if you want to donate it...let me know!

[asakiyume]

I absolutely do! Please enjoy it and/or pass it on to someone who will!

[sartorias]

Thank you! Will do. And my apologies for the, *kaff* long hiatus.

[asakiyume]

LOL, well CLEARLY I wasn't missing it! All's well that ends well!

[asakiyume]

Okay, I searched the title, and now I do remember it. I read it, indeed! I absolutely don't need it back; please do enjoy or donate to someone who will (or both).

[mount_oregano]

Spanish has five genders: masculine, feminine, epicine, common, and ambiguous.

This is explained in relentless detail here:
https://www.rae.es/dpd/g%C3%A9nero

[asakiyume]

Oooh, okay, cool! I'll edit the entry accordingly!

[mount_oregano]

I especially like the ambiguous gender. "The sea" is el mar or la mar, your choice, per the Royal Spanish Academy. These days gender-free articles are coming into use, so I suppose you could call it le mare, too, although the Royal Academy hasn't caught up yet.

[asakiyume]

YESSSS I noticed that re: the sea! I learned it as el mar, and then in la saeta de Joan Manuel Serrat, I heard he sang it "la mar," so I investigated and found it could be either, and that communities that lived by the sea were more likely to have it feminine!

And how right for the sea! No one gender can hold it.

[amaebi]

Thank you so much! That lays out for me grammatical issues I was just mumbling my gums against, nipping them out nicely and specifying their nature.

And for anyone whose Spanish, like mine, is not academic-- the relevant section isn't at all a pain to read.

[yamamanama]

Interesting that they'd have masculine/feminine and not the animate/inanimate distinction.

I took Chinese which has no gender and has male, female, animal, divine being, and inanimate object pronouns along with several nonbinary neologisms, all pronounced tā.

Worrorra has "masculine, feminine, terrestrial, celestial, and collective."

Chinese and Worrorra

[asakiyume]

I am blissing out on both those classifications, so gorgeous.

[med_cat]

Very interesting :)