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

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

> The three-way "grammatical gender" of nAIE is just
> one of many possible noun-classification schemes,
> and it would be Euro-parochial to regard its
> development as something unique. A language may have
> no noun classes at all (i.e., no semantic markers
> determining the grammatical behaviour of the words
> that carry them, especially with respect to
> agreement rules), but if it has only a binary
> opposition, it will usually be "animate/inanimate",
> "feminine/masculine", "human/non-human", etc. (but
> more exotic classifications, e.g. "small/large", or
> "solid/liquid" are also possible). The
> "masculine/feminine/neuter" system is hardly a
> rarity cross-linguistically, while not being the
> only possible three-way classification.

******GK: Let me repeat my original question to Miguel
which Piotr has very kindly commented upon.===Is the
gender reality distinction as

> between AIE and NAIE unique in the world's
> linguistic systems, i.e. are there other language
> families which exhibit a similar innovation as to
> gender awareness in some members of the family only
> as does IE? I am not asking whether the "3-way"

classification is unique, I am asking whether in other
language families which have it there is a similar
distinction between some member languages which do and
some which don't as exists in IE between AIE and NAIE.
On the basis of what Piotr had written so far I would
have guessed that the answer is "No". If I have
guessed wrong let me know.******

>
>PG: Needless to say, once the classification has been
> grammaticalised, gender assignment becomes to a
> large extent conventional -- that is, purely formal
> rather than semantically based;/etc. cut for

economy/

*****GK: Yes. All this is clear enough. What I am
concerned with is the original classification, what
has been claimed to be an "innovation" in NAIE.*****

>
> PG: What militates against reduction in

Proto-Anatolian

> as opposed to complication in Proto-non-Anatolian-IE

*****GK: Thank you Piotr. You see where this is
leading. This is the useful road to take in dealing
with the question.*****

> is the fact (already mentioned by Miguel) that an
> older binary class system is implied by internal
> reconstruction

*****GK: Hmm. Nothing more obvious?*****

within nAIE. Linguists of a century

> ago were already well aware of that -- fossil traces
> of the old system are quite clearly visible even in
> Greek and Latin. What we see in Hittite corresponds
> very closely to what had been independently
> reconstructed before Hittite was discovered.

******GK: If I understand this correctly, the claim is
that these "fossil traces" indicate that NAIE, without
the M-F "innovation" would have developed like AIE?
Viz., an "animate/inanimate" binary opposition? What
are some examples of these traces? When you say "even
in Greek and Latin" do you mean that this fossilized
evidence exists in all NAIE languages? A follow up:
would this evidence show that this is unique to PIE or
would it have shared this with other Nostratic
languages? *****

>
> Piotr
>
>
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Find a job, post your resume.
http://careers.yahoo.com