I guess it would be vaguely similar, but in the "dynamic noun class politeness system" (that's a shitload of words there), you could also use this with mundane objects or non-human entities to reflect what you feel towards them. For instance, you could refer to your pet dog using the equal noun class, indicating you have a close relationship with it, or you could refer to your laptop using the inferior noun class, indicating that you think it's a shitty laptop. Hell, you could expand this to abstract concepts too: if you describe someone's "melancholy" using the inferior noun class, maybe it means you think they should just man up and stop being so emo, or maybe it means that it's something that's demonic and evil (thus "lowly"), depending on the culture. Although that might get a wee bit complicated...?roninbodhisattva wrote:I think this would be the most interesting part of a system like this.
It's not exactly the same, but something like the multiple vocabulary levels in languages like Javanese could be a way you could implement this in a naturalistic way. You could say, have different lexical items in certain registers for nouns, and agreement would agree with the register. Perhaps there would be a separate adjective but then on verbs you might get an agreement morpheme based on the register being used in a sentence or something.
Could be cool.
Oh hell. I think I might use something like this kind of thing as a semi-artificially constructed feature (or one developed out of natural features in an artificial manner) by the crazy Tibetan-Mongol-Japanese-Christian-Buddhist-Himalaya-dweeling-warrior-monk-fundamentalist-Confucian-wacko conculture in my conworld who use it to reflect their religious beliefs or something.