ID: Extra Curricular College of Rokon, Language Arts Class Essay Test

Prompt: In a short, creative essay, describe a mechanic of the Carsenten language as if describing it to a person learning the language.

Dated: 14 August 3074

Title: The Carsenten Third (and Fourth)-Person Pronoun System

Languages of the Sooted Star Network have always been a fascinating thing to me when it comes to handling gender. Being a genderless person myself, I decided to write about the Carsenten language’s pronoun system because I can connect to it on a personal level. I present to you now: the third-person pronoun system.

The pronoun system in Carsenten is a mostly genderless “proximate/obviative” system, also known as a “fourth person” system. “Proximate” refers to the first or main subject mentioned, while “obviative” refers to the second subject mentioned in reference to the first subject. The proximate subject is usually the subject doing an action upon the obviative subject when first mentioned. I will provide brief examples soon.

Even though the proximate and obviative pronouns are genderless in this system, there are actually gendered versions of them, too, which are used more rarely. I will get into that as well.

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Here are the two basic proximate and obviative pronouns, also known as the singular genderless pronouns:

Proximate: zei, en, huir, huirs, enself – (pronunciations: “zay, en, hear, hears, enself”)

Obviative: nei, nem, neir, neirs, nemself – (pronunciations: “nay, nem, nare, nares, nemself")

You may use the “zei” pronoun generally for the first subject mentioned (the proximate subject). This subject tends to be more “in focus” or the one doing the action upon a second subject. On the other hand, you may use the “nei” pronoun for the second subject mentioned (the obviative subject) who is less in focus or is being acted upon. This is not always the case in more complex sentences or passages as long as the subjects are still apparent.

As an example:

“Zei found huir notebook at neir house.”

So what’s going on? Basically:

“Zei(PROX)found huir(PROX) notebook at neir(OBV) house”

First subject found first subject’s notebook at second subject’s house.

Now, it gets a little more complex when adding gendered versions of these two basic pronouns to the equation.

For the proximate pronouns:

Feminine: she, her, her, hers, herself

Masculine: he, him, his, his, himself

And for the obviative pronouns:

Feminine: sie, sier, sier, siers, sierself – (pronunciations: “sea, sear, sear, sears, searself")

Masculine: ve, vir, vir, virs, virself – (pronunciations: “vee, ver, ver, vers, verself")

These gendered versions of the proximate and obviative pronouns aren’t used much, if at all, in regular conversation, unless someone is telling an extensive story or wishes to emphasize a subject’s gender. As well, they serve well for written narratives. Basically how they’re used is that when a subject is unknown, you may mention huir name and then a gendered version of the proximate or obviative pronoun once. However, when continuing a sentence with the same subject, you change the pronoun to the default genderless version.

Here’s a fairly simple progression in which this occurs:

“When Madelyn decided to finally head out on the road trip, she packed huir belongings and called all huir friends to inform them that zei was leaving.”

^ You can see above that Madelyn is referred to as “she” once but “zei” the rest of the time.

Now let’s try a more complex progression with two subjects:

“Orion didn’t remember where he placed huir bag, so zei asked Madelyn if sie knew. However, nei didn’t know either.”

^ In this sentence, Madelyn is the obviative subject. Madelyn is referred to as “sie” first and then “nei” the rest of the time, just like in the first example sentence.

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Anyways, that’s the gist of it. Thank you for reading this. I look forward to learning more about languages in the future in general and writing more of these kinds of informative essays.