Suggestion for a new animac= y marker in Lojban.

Many if not most languages= divide all predicates into levels of animacy.

English, for insta= nce, has at least two levels. These are the pronouns for them

1. = Animate. He/she

2. Inanimate. It

This al= lows quickly determine agents of most actions.

Example:

The woman was looking at the mirror. It was ugly.

Let's try it i= n Lojban.

{lo ninmu pu ca'o catlu lo minra .i ta pu tolmelbi}

No, too ambiguous. And I opine that counting two sumti back in order= to use {ra} is much trickier for human brain than just understanding seman= tic roles of sumti.

Therefore, I suggest introducing a new marker= reflecting animacy of any object. I'll use {xoi} which currently bears no = official meaning.

xoi - marks preceding construct = as animate

xoinai - marks preceding construct as inanimate

<= div>

{lo ninmu pu ca'o catlu lo minra. i ta xoinai pu tolmelb= i}

However, some languages have more levels of ani= macy.

The father was looking at his son. He was beautiful.

<= div>{lo patfu pu catlu lo bersa .i ta xoixime'i pu melbi}

The aut= hor of this sentence probably thinks that children are less animate than gr= own-ups.

So we can build a scale ranging from most animate = objects to inanimate.

It's only the speaker who decides what leve= l of animacy this or that object has.

Gender-sp= ecific pronouns.

You might argue why not add more specific ma= rkers reflecting for instance the gender of the object described.

Let's repeat once again.

English has at least two= levels. These are the pronouns for them

1. Animate. He/she

2. Inanimate. It

In other words, English has = two pronouns expressing sex but only one pronoun expressing inanimate objec= ts.

There might be languages that split inanimate levels into oth= er specific classes (furniture, houses, weapons).

Therefore, it w= ould be stupid to try to import all those quirks of natlangs. {ta poi nakni= } is fine.

Unsettled issues.

Some= languages have "abstractions" in their lowest level of animacy hierarchy.<= /div>

Lojban is pretty strict when dealing with objects and abstraction= s. The issue with the scale "su'unai - su'u" that one might imagine remains= unsettled.

I started this thread bec= ause in the list of semantics primitives reacted by A.Wierzbicka "who" and = "what" are separate concepts.

However, the list is far from perfe= ction if you read her books really thoroughly. {ma poi prenu} {ma poi dacti= } (even when objects are persons) might be enough. Anyway it's a highly spe= culative topic.

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