Gold gender chart

Gold nouns have complex gender inflections. See also Khulls verbs.

GENDER SYSTEM

Gender	Epicene ♁	Fem+ ♀	Fem- ⚳	Young Fem ☿	Unisex ☼	Neuter ⚲	Masc ♂
AGENT	PATIENT
4 Greater Feminine ♀	♁	♀	♀	♀	♀	♀	♁
3 Lesser Feminine ⚳	♁	♀	⚳	⚳	⚳	⚳	♂
3 Young Feminine ☿	♁	♀	⚳	☿	☿	☿	♂
1 Unisex ☼	♁	♀	⚳	☿	☼	☼	♂
0 Neuter ⚲	♁	♀	⚳	☿	☼	⚲	♂
4 Epicene ♁	♁	♀	⚳	☿	♁	♁	♂
4 Masculine ♂	♁	♁	♁	♁	♂	♂	♂

Semantic associations of noun genders

Most words for objects that are non-human, but living, belong to one of the animate genders. The assignment of gender largely follows semantic boundaries, but the choice of which gender to use has little in common with an object's physical characteristics. For example, all words for sea life belong to the greater feminine gender, even if they are words for male animals. Celestial objects also belong to the greater feminine gender. All words for birds, meanwhile, belong to the "maiden" gender, also known as the young feminine. (NOTE: This is true in some daughterl ags, not gold itself)

Greater feminine gender

The greater feminine gender is marked primarily by -m- and -s-. Words in the greater feminine gender usually belong to one of the following semantic categories:

1. Adult human females.
2. Edible objects, particularly processed foods rather than those which are edible in their natural form.

Lesser feminine gender

The lesser feminine gender is also marked primarily by -m- and -s-. Words in the lesser feminine gender usually belong to one of the following semantic categories:

1. Adult human females.
2. Celestial objects; fire.
3. Snakes and worms.
4. Abstract concepts such as love and beauty.
5. Names of rivers and nations.
6. Soft objects.
7. Women's clothing and feminine hygiene products.
8. All sea life, including penguins.
9. Females of certain large, domesticated mammals.
10. Soap and mixed potions.
11. Money as an abstract.

Young feminine gender

The young feminine gender is marked primarily by -n-. Words in the young feminine gender usually belong to one of the following semantic categories:

1. Young girls and unmarried women.
2. Most fruits that can be eaten in one sitting.
3. Birds other than penguins.
4. Sharp objects.
5. Most placenames other than those of rivers and nations.
6. Money in the form of coins.

Manmade handheld objects are often found in this gender, from association with Mumba rae "hand", whose locative case yielded yaʕ in Gold, even though this word itself has not survived. (The word for coin may simply be derived from this very same morpheme, if it can be traced further back.)

Masculine gender

The masculine gender is marked primarily by -t- and -d-. Words in the masculne gender usually belong to one of the following semantic categories:

1. Men and boys.
2. Males of some large domesticated animals.
3. Some words for fruits. (More common in the descendants than in Gold itself.)

Epicene gender

The epicene gender is marked primarily by -p- and -d-. It is always plural. Words in the epicene gender are generally words for groups of humans, or groups that include humans, but there are exceptions such as

1. Water and other fluids whose name is derived from the word for water.
2. Possibly round objects (from Mumba puarna).

The epicene has no singular form. It generally refers to groups of people of mixed gender, and therefore is never singular either as a subject or an object. It often corresponds to English "they/them". Epicenes can in fact refer to a single person, but only when of an entity whose size is unknown (e.g. "those who passed the test", even if only 1 student passes). Also, many words for mass nouns are epicene. For example, water.

The epicene therefore cannot be 1st person singular or 2nd person singular, either as a subj or an obj. Additionally, it never changes (in most langs) when serving as a patient for an agent of a different gender.

BETTER IDEA... 1ST AND 2ND PERSON *CAN* TAKE GENDER INFLECTIONS, BUT IT MEANS "ME AND A WOMAN", "YOU AND A MAN", ETC.

Unisex gender

The unisex gender is marked primarily by -d-. Words in this gender are reassigned to the masculine gender in many daughter languages. Words in the unisex gender usually belong to one of the following semantic categories:

1. Babies whose gender is not known or not expressed.
2. Reptiles, amphibians, and some small mammals of either sex.
3. Grass, flowers, and small plants; apples and pears.
4. Some words for diminutives.

Neuter gender

The neuter gender is the only true inanimate gender. It does not have a thematic consonant. Neuters in bare form can never be the subject of a verb, and they have no distinct accusative case because the nominative serves also as the accusative. Words in the neuter gender take on the gender of their possessor, however, when the possessor is animate, which allows them to become the agent of transitive verbs. Words in the neuter gender tend to be words for

1. Inanimate objects of all types not included in any of the above metaphorically animate categories such as celestial objects.
2. Very primitive animals seen as unable to act on their own behalf.

Since neuters cannot be agents of verbs(except a few irregulars), it may make sense to have 1st & 2nd person pronouns behave as if they were neuters. Essentially, a neuter 2nd person agent marking on a verb is equivalent to using the pronoun "you" in a pronoun-using language. In some ways, this will not "feel" like a neuter since the 1st & 2nd person args will be marked with consos, like the animate genders.

Thus, in Gold, plants actually rank higher on the animacy hierarchy than some animals.

Breadth of gender categories

The assignment of animals to particular categories is based on their habitat rather than their taxonomic ancestry. Thus, for example, penguins are grouped with fish in the "sea life" category, rather than with other birds. Bats, however, are found in the unisex gender, alongside other small mammals.

This tendency became much stronger in two of the daughter languages of Gold, Babakiam (ancestor of Pabappa and Poswa) and Khulls. This is because these languages dumped the classifier system but retained the categories to some extent, and forged new classifier-like morphemes that attached to the end of a word rather than the beginning. In both branches, the locative case became a zero morph in unstressed syllables, meaning that, for example, -pa "in the water" (for Babakiam) and -e "in the water" (for Khulls) came to appear on many nouns.