Women-specific 'artlang', invented by Suzette Haden Elgin. Lojban's evidentials are inherited from it (although of course, Láadan in turn got them from Amerindian human languages.)
What does it mean for a language to have a gender? - la kreig.daniyl.
Check out http://www.interlog.com/~kms/Laadan/, and you tell me!
Another "test of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" language.
It has words for womanly things. That doesn't make it womanly, just gender-neutral. English may be "male" in some way, but laadan strikes me as neither.
Láadan is clearly feminine; see the pretty purple they used for the web page? It looks like a breast cancer site.
But is the vocabulary purple also? (The vocabulary is indeed worth examining; it has specific terms for things like "discord in the home", "anger, for good and not futile reasons", "pain or loss which comes as a relief by virtue of ending the anticipation of its coming", "contentment despite negative circumstances", "the female sexual act", and "the act of relinquishing a cherished/ comforting/ familiar perception".)
I despair of this ThreadMode discourse ever congealing into DocumentMode , but the foundational assumption of Láadan is that women's perception of the word is fundamentally incommensurable with men's. So if purple meta-means what I think it meta-means, the answer is yes.
Grammar
Lojban got its evidentials from Láadan, but they are organized quite differently:
Most Láadan sentences contain three particles:
- The speech-act particle – this occurs at the beginning of the sentence and marks it as either a statement (bÃi), a question (báa), et cetera; in connected speech or writing, this particle is often omitted. They are:
word | translation | Lojban equivalent |
BÃi | Indicates a declarative sentence (usually optional) | ju'a |
Báa | Indicates a question | xu |
Bó | Indicates a command; very rare, except to small children | ko |
Bóo | Indicates a request; this is the usual imperative/"command" form | .e'o |
Bé | Indicates a promise | nu'e |
Bée | Indicates a warning | .e'unai |
- The grammatical tense particle.
This occurs second in the sentence and marks it as either
word | translation | Lojban equivalent |
ril | present tense | ca ku |
eril | past tense | pu ku |
aril | future tense | ba ku |
wil | hypothetical | da'i |
Without the tense particle, the sentence is assumed to have the same tense as the previous sentence.
- The evidence particle – this occurs at the end of statements and indicates the trustworthiness of the statement. They are:
Láadan Evidence Act Morpheme | translation | Lojban equivalent |
wa | Known to speaker because perceived by speaker, externally or internally | za'a/se'o/ju'a |
wi | Known to speaker because self-evident | li'a |
we | Perceived by speaker in a dream | se'o |
wáa | Assumed true by speaker because speaker trusts source | .iati'e |
waá | Assumed false by speaker because speaker distrusts source; if evil intent by the source is also assumed, the form is "waálh" | .ianaiti'e |
wo | Imagined or invented by speaker, hypothetical | da'i/ru'a |
wóo | Used to indicate that the speaker states a total lack of knowledge as to the validity of the matter | |
waálh | .ianaiti'e.iunaidai? (There must be a better word for malicious intent.) | |
wáo | ju'ocu'i/pe'icu'i |
This brings up an interesting question: What is the correct evidential in Lojban (assuming normal experiences) for a sentence like "mi xagji"? za'a? se'o?
Extract from a Wikipedia article
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