Saturday, May 21, 2022

Detail #429: Pseudo-Gender

It struck me that a language could have a system of lexical associations that are somewhat gender-like without quite being a gender system. Let's begin with a basic, fairly gender-like version.

The ways in which this system expresses itself is in which nouns are used to express relations:

If a thing is the origin of something, it's either its mother or father; if it originates with another thing, it is its son or daughter; it goes together with something - brother or sister. Closely associated with something? Husband or wife. Other typically sex-specific terms are also associated, and human-metaphors are either fully male-centric or fully female-centric for any given noun.

However, we can also imagine other ways of expressing relations. Maybe the categories are streams and trees!

Origin - source, root.
'Offspring' - (part of) delta, branch (or nut, or seed, or fruit)
Associate - a different, named river that is culturally seen as close, a specific different species of tree
Intimate associate - a named tributary, the word for a major branch
Decline - drought, fall over
Increase - flood, grow


Sunday, May 1, 2022

A Question about Syllabic Consonants

Is there any language that has a syllabic consonant that, in the language, lacks a non-syllabic equivalent?

E.g. a language whose only lateral is a syllabic consonant, or whose only rhotic is syllabic.