Re: Last point: Lesbianism is NOT salacious

----- Original Message -----

From: John Croft

To: cybalist@eGroups.com

Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2000 8:09 AM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: Last point: Lesbianism is NOT salacious

Sexuality in language is an interesting point. Poitr can you enlishten me on the use and history of gender in PIE and the differences within and between languages? John, it's a number of question compressed into one. I'd have to unzip it first and discuss these things separately. In fact it looks like an invitation to write a book about gender in PIE. I'll do my best to give you an answer but please be patient. Introductory handbooks often do more to confuse the question of IE gender than to clarify it, partly because of the strange schizophrenia about the "Indo-Hittite" hypothesis (the assumption that non-Anatolian languages are more closely related to each other than any of them is to Hittite or Luwian). Most linguists accept some version of this hypothesis, but few dare to admit it openly because of the bad name it once had -- at the time when apalling atrocities broke out between the folks who drew family trees and those who etched Sprachbund areas. One of the conditions of the armistice was that the problem should be swept under the rug whenever possible. In effect, we often reconstruct non-Anatolian IE and call it PIE, unless it's necessary to take Anatolian data into account. More about it later, if that's OK.   Piotr   PS Please spell me P-I-O-T-R, or I'll call you Jhon. The name's pronounced [pyotr] -- monosyllabic, more or less a rhyme for French autre.   P.