Can Gens Master Simelan?
Considerations of the "SEC" prefix, suffix, infix, particle in Simelan.
(as in the coinage Sectuib which first appears at the time of Del Rimon
Farris, the First Sectuib in Zeor.)
Jacqueline Lichtenberg:
Jean will probably have a great deal to say about this one, but I'm convinced it's true. I have very little linguistics and what I learned came (except for one Linguistics survey course which doesn't count in this milieu) mostly from Anthropology and Classics courses which I loved and did better in than in my Chemistry, Physics and Math. Other than that, I've studied though not mastered Latin, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, and encountered mere smatterings of Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, - only what Spanish any Californian picks up in self-defense - and I once audited a French class in college and paid some attention to a tv course in it - enough to grasp its Romance Language origins and not enough to decipher a spoken utterance without subtitles or to tell one accent from another. Jean however, is a real Linguist with the right sort of mind for that discipline and a Literary background to go with it.
Jean also speaks fluent Astrology and Tarot and Psychology, but not physics or chemistry - all of which are languages in the most legitimate sense, not just collections of jargon terms embedded in a matrix of English syntax but really different ways of parsing Reality.
And it's that very different way of parsing reality that gives us insight into the concept represented by SEC in Simelan. It can be - as we've seen - both a prefix and an infix. It can also be a suffix when necessary.
In any position within a word, it marks that word as referencing the local nageric configuration - the field gradients graphed using the Speaker of the Utterance as the "origin" of the graph.
You can think of it like that textbook illustration of a gravity well that's done with computer graphics - you may have seen it on a tv special or two where it's used to depict the gravity well of the Earth or the Sun.
Think of a thin rubber sheet with sticks poking up here and there stretching the sheet into peaks - and something else here and there pulling the sheet down into peaks that go downward. That's how Simes perceive their local surroundings when duo or hyperconscious.
"Sec" marks the object represented by the attached word as being a stick poking up making a PEAK in the ambient - a HIGH FIELD - but it can also represent a LOW in the ambient - representing a "sink" in the local field.
Thus it designates something that DOMINATES its locality - something strong enough to stretch the local nageric fabric of reality despite whatever else might be around - something POWERFUL.
And that's a perfect description of what a Sectuib or a Sosectu is, isn't it?
Tuib we established was a term of respect (derived from the vocabulary of a local band of settled in Freeband Raiders in Nivet Territory.) Tuib is like "Sir" or "Mister" or perhaps the Spanish "Don" except that it doesn't take an act of a Monarch to achieve it. It takes riches, land, Gens, POWER.
A Tuib who dominates the ambient no matter what's around him/her, is a Sectuib. Legally, the Gens of a Householding had to be owned by a Sime - and they (as Jean said in FIRST CHANNEL and CHANNEL'S DESTINY) volunteered to be owned by Rimon - then his son Zeth, then Del Rimon, Zeth's son.
That's where the "tuib" came in. Now we know where the Sec comes from: Being in the presence of a Sectuib produces an overwhelming physical sensation - and it's especially noticeable when the Sectuib uses showfield to manipulate the ambient while other Simes are in that vicinity.
Also, Sectuib becomes a Title when everyone around has to term one particular Tuib a Sectuib. In other words, as with most Simelan structures - the correct grammar and syntax is determined by subjective criteria using the speaker as the origin of the graph. If the "other" person in the transaction is field-dominator, that person is Sec. Whether the "other" is dominant depends on who the Speaker is and what condition that Speaker is in at that moment. EXCEPT WHERE A SECTUIB is involved. The Sectuib is Dominant to EVERYONE ALL THE TIME - an exception to all rules. Thus it becomes a Title - not just of respect but of fact that is incontrovertible to any Sime in the area.
Rhonda K. Marsh
Hallelujah! I'm a linguist, too, and this discussion about the particle "-sec-" rings absolutely true. I love it!
You're approaching the concept called "deixis"; the this/that polarity. Whether any object is called *this* thing or *that* thing depends on its proximity to the speaker, just as "here/there" and even "I/you" do ("I" isn't any particular person, of course, it's whoever is speaking; "you" is the addressee). There are other deictic pronouns, too, I just can't think of them offhand.
Leigh Kimmel:
Yes, and it shows how deixis in Simelan is dependent upon Sime senses, and thus why Gens can't master the adult-Sime mode because of that lack. They can't perceive the field gradients that are essential to determining whether it's "here" or "there" when "here" and "there" depend on a matrix of field gradients instead of simple spatial nearness or farness from the speaker, the listener, or some other referent.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg:
Yes yes yes! But that's only the merest shadow of the real reason Gens can't master Simelan.
When our LANGUAGE parses the universe in a certain way (I/you for example) our entire philosophy, epistemology and sense of right and wrong is DERIVED FROM THAT PERCEPTION of that parsing as 'Natural Law' - it forms the unconscious assumptions behind the unconscious assumptions etc, in a long chain before we get up to any philosophy that can be articulated.
It's that higher level of ABSTRACTION that Gens can't express in Simelan (in any way intelligible to Simes that is). It's not that Gens can't think on that level - but that they can't TALK on that level in Simelan - except to other Gens who share their perceptual reality. That's why a "genlan" language develops out of Simelan when the Householdings let Gens "grow up" and become educated yet deprive them of a real language they can use to speak of what they understand abstractly.
Since a lot of Householder Gens have an out-T background (as ex-captives), a lot of that Gen language is borrowed and assimilated out-T dialect. The result is a kind of Gennish (like Yiddish).
And note: the ability to abstract grows with age. That's why the Gen use of Simelan seems "child's language" to Simes.