Greg Jao:
JL's new "realization" (or is it just a new "verbalization"?) also explains why Sectuib has no plural. Only one field can dominate in a locality.
Leigh Kimmel:
Which would also answer my long-standing question of whether the "has no plural" means that it simply has no plural form (similar to how "sheep" has no plural form in English) or whether it also cannot take a plural verb -- so that one must use such constructions as "each Sectuib goes" when one must discuss the actions of the leadership of several Householdings.
((Read "House-Binding", an out-take from RenSime!, for a more in-depth understanding of what a Sectuib is.))
Leigh Kimmel:
Ah, like in Jack Vance's The Languages of Pao, where the Paonese language has only very weak and occasionally used forms for "I", whereas the language of the wizards (name escapes me at the moment, it's been years since I read it) revolved around "I" and determined everything in relationship to self.
The idea of how language shapes perception is a big interest of mine. I wrote a whole novel that revolved around the idea of a language that encoded everything around a master-slave dichotomy, and what happened to a person from that culture who had to learn a language that assumed that everyone is basically equal. One of these days I hope to put it in order and be able to sell it.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg:
In Simelan, they do.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg:
Simes and Gens aren't the only, or even always the dominant, element in a field gradient. Sometimes a stone wall is the dominant element.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg:
That's not true. Field gradient referents don't refer to objects - they refer to field gradients - the condition of the reality matrix in which the objects are embedded. It's a totally different way of parsing reality, which aligns perfectly with Sime senses.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg:
Nope, that's when they become more useful.
Jacqueline Lichtenberg:
Oh, no, that's where they are the most useful. That's what's referred to by the wholly inadequate English glossing "ambient nager" and it is what determines likely emotional responses and subsequent behavior. Furthermore, it's quoted the way pilots quote "ceiling" and "visibility". And the very fact that such a phenomenon as ambientness in fields exists provides a springboard for a huge chunk of Sime philosophy. What non-donor Gens zlin like under such circumstances is the origin of the myth that Gens aren't human. And that's only the beginning of the philosophical implications.
Leigh Kimmel:
Am I right in gathering that it's the fact that these Gens don't respond nagericly to changes in the ambient that leads to this notion that Gens aren't really human?
I'm sort of halfway glimpsing what you're talking about, as if "out of the corner of my mind's eye." The idea of how this perception filters their whole reality is really neat -- very similar to what I'm thinking about in terms of psionics, but am not ready to really do yet.
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