>Their age does not seem to grant them
>any kind of in-between status.
In the real world, however, distinctions *do* occur. The suggested Newborn, Younger and Older categories are useful ones, and could be explained as being "unspoken rules" within Heortling culture. Every real-world agrarian society of which I am aware distinguishes between children who are mature enough to contribute to the day-to-day labor and those who are not, even if no one in the society would think to lump those children together into a group by name. Our need is to provide prospective narrators with numbers that work for Twenty-first Century mindsets, yet do not derail the mythopoetic focus of the setting.
--
Michael Richard Schwartz | Language is my playground,
mschwartz_at_rZVHnSxt_unhtBobOeg_SoAipxBzejO0YYFdk59h0zXCwXDQRGFS-_5gd3Bqpm0ScDsDLzqIklspQgyWjN0.yahoo.invalid | and words, its slides and
Ann Arbor, Michigan USA | swingsets. -- yours truly
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