Once upon a time, I had a chat on Facebook about what kind of gender system a race of insectoids might have. I had a thought or two on that matter that turned into this, which I found in a file oh-so-descriptively named "notes.txt":
Animate/Edible (most plants and animals, water, and enemies)
Inanimate/Edible (meat; grains, cooked, processed or manufactured foods)
Animate/Inedible (people, poisonous plants and animals, spirits, emotions, fire)
Inanimate/Inedible (Most concrete, inanimate objects)
The difference between 'pig' and 'pork' is one of gender-- a pig is A/E and pork is I/E.
Abstract concepts are assigned gender according to where they seem to best fit metaphorically. Animate and inanimate could also be seen as moving/stationary-- “Murder” is probably A/I because it is an action (moving) committed by living things (animate), while “neglect” might be I/I, because it is a sort of non-action.
Also in this file was a paradigm showing what I will assume is the present indicative of a verb tos or tosva. I know what tosva is ("there is, there are"), so I guess I was just working back from there to coax a more useful verb out of it.
Anyway, I thought I'd post some orphaned bits and pieces while I work on a potential overhaul of Nevashi nouns, which is taking me longer to write up than I initially thought it would. (It's actually two different possible alternatives to the system in the documentation now.)
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