Re: [tied] Gender (Was: Dating PIE)

--- Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
Note also

> that, by contrast, the Anatolian languages display
> no "fossil" evidence of ever having had a m./f.
> gender distinction in their prehistory. It seems, in
> particular, that the familiar *-ah2- (or *-ih2-)
> femininity marker, so productive in all nAIE
> branches, doesn't correspond to _anything_ in
> Anatolian.

*****GK: I accept this as a very strong argument.*****

>

P.G.:Generally, the deeper you dig, the more traces
can

> be unearthed. /.../ The most important facts are the
> following:
>
> The masculine and feminine genders are not formally
> distinguished e.g. by having different inflectional
> endings (cf. *bHrah2te:r : *mah2te:r) except in the
> _least_ archaic declensional classes. At the same
> time they are jointly differentiated from the
> neuter. This means that, in general, the m. or f.
> gender of consonantal, *-i- and *-u-stem animate
> nouns cannot be deduced from the way they are
> declined (if you don't happen to remember whether
> Latin nouns like <pe:s>, <ops>, <li:mes> or <piscis>
> are m. or f., you have to look them up in a
> dictionary).

*****GK: This also appears to be a strong argument.At
least to non-linguists with a modicum of little grey
cells (:=))*****

>
>P.G.: There is more evidence, all pointing in the

same

> direction. Hittite declensions look just like what
> must be reconstructed as the most archaic stratum of
> nAIE. It is virtually unthinkable that a language
> should have lost its most productive paradigms and
> preserve only minor and irregular ones -- and that's
> what would have to be proposed for Anatolian under
> the "simplification" scenario.

*****GK: Point taken. In that case the question about
Nostratic loses relevance. But given the apparent
indubitability of Anatolian archaisms I do not see how
it is possible (in the absence of clearcut
archaeological evidence to the contrary) to maintain a
late date for these languages' appearance in Anatolia
(like 2000 BC). Mallory states somewhere that 3000 BC
is not out of the question for this move. I think we
have to go back even deeper and assume that these
populations developed "in situ" for quite a long time
before emerging into the glare of history thanks to
Assyrian traders. The earlier discussions about
"horse", "wheel", and "wheeled vehicle" are back in
focus. Acc. to the article by
Bakker-Kruk-Lanting-Miliskausas in ANTIQUITY 1999, pp.
778-790, the earliest known wheeled vehicles developed
in Mesopotamia and their use swiftly spread to Europe
ca. 3500 BC (exact routes unknown but reality
confirmed, incl. Bronocice and Flinbek). Given that
the "wheel" and "wheeled vehicle" are not clearly and
ubiquitously attested in AIE in IE terms, and that
"horse" seems to be an Indo-Aryan (or more likely
"satemized" Proto-Indo-Iranian) borrowing in Luwian,
we would have to look at a linguistic and geographical
separation time earlier than 3.500 BC. And the
scenario of AIE moving away from the rest (to
Anatolia) rather than the rest moving away from a
South European AIE (via LBK) seems a bit more
plausible at this juncture. Bec. of the late arrival
of "horse" esp.*****

>
>

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