Tikuna update: genders
Feb. 18th, 2024 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.)
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!
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Date: 2024-02-18 06:37 am (UTC)That's so interesting!
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Date: 2024-02-18 03:51 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2024-02-18 05:10 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2024-02-18 06:29 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2024-02-18 06:40 pm (UTC)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]
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Date: 2024-02-18 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-18 06:53 pm (UTC)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?
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Date: 2024-02-18 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2024-02-18 10:13 am (UTC)Hungarian is ungendered which rather annoys an old friend of ours, Laura, who is Hungarian speaking and happens to be a trans woman.
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Date: 2024-02-18 12:57 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2024-02-20 12:17 am (UTC)(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).
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Date: 2024-02-18 10:01 pm (UTC)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)
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Date: 2024-02-18 10:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-18 10:37 pm (UTC)But if you want to donate it...let me know!
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Date: 2024-02-18 08:14 pm (UTC)This is explained in relentless detail here:
https://www.rae.es/dpd/g%C3%A9nero
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Date: 2024-02-18 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2024-02-18 10:14 pm (UTC)And how right for the sea! No one gender can hold it.
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Date: 2024-02-19 10:08 am (UTC)And for anyone whose Spanish, like mine, is not academic-- the relevant section isn't at all a pain to read.
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Date: 2024-02-20 01:38 am (UTC)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
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