Lesbianism and IE gender distinction

From: Dennis Poulter
Message: 1040
Date: 2000-01-21

Just for information, Malay also has no gender distinction, neither in pronouns or noun forms. There are of course words for "mother", "woman", "girl", otherwise one has to use the adjectives for "male" and "female" .
 
On the other hand, Arabic has gender distinction between masculine and feminine right across the board.
Apart from a few nouns that are feminine by usage, feminine nouns are generally marked by a special ending /-ah/ or in its full classical form /-atun/. There is strict agreement with adjectives and verbs. There are pronouns for 3rd person feminine singular and plural, and 2nd person singular and plural. In the classical language there are verbal forms for 2nd and 3rd persons feminine singular, plural and dual.
Also, all inanimate plural nouns are considered feminine singular for the purposes of adjectival/verbal agreement.
 
As regards the IE feminine, I read somewhere that the -H (laryngeal) ending originally denoted a collective, the idea being that it was connected with femininity through herd animals (cows, goats etc.) being females. Perhaps also IE families were polygamous. So that men such as sailors (nauta) or farmers (agricola) were seen as a collective (team?).
 
Regards
Dennis