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/lit/ - Literature

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4071455 No.4071455 [Reply] [Original]

Hallo /lit/, /mu/tant here.

I'm not sure if you guys ever talk about language itself or just books, but I figured this was the best place for this.

Would a language be simpler with or without distinctions between alive things and nonliving things, eg; *They* are dogs. *Those* are rocks. *He* is a dog. *It* is a fence.

Sometimes it can be difficult to imagine concepts like that, because there are obviously going to be some situations where it makes it simpler and possibly some where it makes it difficult.

>> No.4071460

Portuguese is like that, every word is either male or female, so everything is either a he or a she.

>> No.4071471

>>4071455
>Hallo /lit/, /mu/tant here.
Get the fuck out.

>> No.4071472

>>4071460
Oh yeah, nouns with genders. It may be just because I didn't grow up with it, but that's always seemed more complex than what's necessary to me. I think genders should be limited to things that actually have genders.

I might be biased. I'm not sure. It's hard to know exactly how much these things really make sense when you learned other things first.

>>4071471
make me fegot

>> No.4071475

>>4071460
So you're saying that men are living things whereas women are nonliving objects?

>> No.4071477

>>4071460

Spanish goes even further than that, a certain word can be masculine OR feminine depending on the context and/or usage

>> No.4071479

>Would a language be simpler with or without distinctions between alive things and nonliving things, eg; *They* are dogs. *Those* are rocks. *He* is a dog. *It* is a fence.

Obviously it would be simpler. Does that mean it would be more precise? Almost certainly not.

Having said that, words in French, Spanish, and other romance languages are heavily affected by gender, which is probably something we could do without.

>> No.4071483

>>4071479
>Does that mean it would be more precise?

Just realized the question I'm actually looking for is "Is the precision granted important enough to warrant the added complexity?"

Thanks. I knew "simpler" wasn't quite correct but couldn't think of any better way to word it.

>> No.4071485

>>4071455

What about things that aren't living but may be conscious?

Inanimate objects can have phenomenological consciousness in a Whiteheadian or in a panpsychist sense - something similar to Chalmer's naturalism, say.

The point is: using "whether object X is living" as the basis for such linguistic alterations is completely arbitrary.

I'd love to hear how you'd define "living" to begin with.

>> No.4071488

>>4071479

>Having said that, words in French, Spanish, and other romance languages are heavily affected by gender, which is probably something we could do without.

Actually, romance languages depend a lot more on context than anglo/germanic languages, which is why Spanish has roughly half as many words as English

>> No.4071499

>>4071485
Obviously it's up to the speaker. I'm not going to try and define consciousness to you, but in modern English if *you* define something as "living", *you* will personally say he, she, they, etc. and if you don't, it, those, etc.

Without that distinction we would use one thing for all thins, conscious or not.

Also does this board have italics? I know there's a couple that do.