Eekohudespair
Sep. 4th, 2002 12:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strange_aeonsOne would think that living, as I do, in an environment wherein I am perpetually up to my ears in many and varied representatives of the illustrious phylum Arthropoda would desensitize me. After all, Salon keeps publishing hysterical, poorly-researched articles on how precisely this effect may be observed in soft, pink children exposed to excessive media violence, and if it's in Salon, it must be true, right? I certainly thought that, though maybe 'prayed' would be a better word. But no, looks like it doesn't work quite that way, at least not for me. I've reached the point at which I can't even bring myself to duck under the spiderweb in the front doorway (there's always one there, no matter how many spiders I kill); I have to get rid of it with a broom. I can't go out back at all.
I'm not looking forward to fall. Just thinking about it exhausts me.
I've been pondering one of the many possible wossnames of inheritance among critters. Wossnames. I'm sure there's a real noun I could put there, but I have no idea what it is. Anyway, female-line is probably most common, because without genetic testing only the mother can be determined with total certainty (see also humans; and even then you can make a mistake), and females have the size and tendency-to-physical-power to back that sort of thing up. That's not what I'm playing with, though. What I'm thinking of is janitor-line inheritance. The estate goes to the firstborn janitor, who's expected to find (or to have already found, by the time the passing-on-of-money happens) a female to defend the estate and a male (remember, they're the ones stereotyped as intelligent) to manage it.
Work on a language progresses, though slowly. I'm kind of stymied on the morphology, because no matter what I do, it all looks like Martian to me, not like a language with a coherent sound. I'm also vaguely worried that the whole thing is too Indo-European. VSO; nouns inflect for gender, number, case; verbs agree with their subjects and probably their objects as well. That's all enclitic; there are also a lot of unattached particles, most (thirty-one, at last count) of them indicating aspect. I love aspect. I can't get enough of it. Aspect is my fantasy boyfriend.
I need to work out more about the culture this language is attached to before I can get anywhere on the subject of what gender does to nouns, exactly. Whatever else happens, I know I'm keeping that.
Now, with extra coherency goodness! I should know better than to not proof these things when I'm writing at nearly one in the morning.
I'm not looking forward to fall. Just thinking about it exhausts me.
I've been pondering one of the many possible wossnames of inheritance among critters. Wossnames. I'm sure there's a real noun I could put there, but I have no idea what it is. Anyway, female-line is probably most common, because without genetic testing only the mother can be determined with total certainty (see also humans; and even then you can make a mistake), and females have the size and tendency-to-physical-power to back that sort of thing up. That's not what I'm playing with, though. What I'm thinking of is janitor-line inheritance. The estate goes to the firstborn janitor, who's expected to find (or to have already found, by the time the passing-on-of-money happens) a female to defend the estate and a male (remember, they're the ones stereotyped as intelligent) to manage it.
Work on a language progresses, though slowly. I'm kind of stymied on the morphology, because no matter what I do, it all looks like Martian to me, not like a language with a coherent sound. I'm also vaguely worried that the whole thing is too Indo-European. VSO; nouns inflect for gender, number, case; verbs agree with their subjects and probably their objects as well. That's all enclitic; there are also a lot of unattached particles, most (thirty-one, at last count) of them indicating aspect. I love aspect. I can't get enough of it. Aspect is my fantasy boyfriend.
I need to work out more about the culture this language is attached to before I can get anywhere on the subject of what gender does to nouns, exactly. Whatever else happens, I know I'm keeping that.
Now, with extra coherency goodness! I should know better than to not proof these things when I'm writing at nearly one in the morning.
