Piotr to George:
>Ask the Nostraticists; I am not one :). There are several different
>noun-class systems in languages regarded as Nostratic (including total
>absence of noun classes). Even if Proto-Nostratic really
>existed, there has been enough time for its noun-class system (if
>any) to have changed beyond recognition.
Oh goody! A Nostratic question! I agree with Piotr. As I continue
to believe, the animate-inanimate contrast seen in the earlier
reconstructable stage of IndoEuropean goes further back (but not
all the way to Nostratic). I've suggested that the animate-inanimate
contrast goes back at least as far as ProtoSteppe though since we
have an otherwise genderless Proto-Uralic with *k- and *m-
interrogatives, clearly showing a relic of this ancient bipolar
contrast. (In other words, Uralic lost the gender contrast
completely aside from the above artifacts.)
As for Nostratic itself, I've suggested already that it had
at least three genders (human, animal and object) and that the
language itself derives from an older prefixal "word-class" system
in DeneCaucasian, similar to that of Swahili.
Eat your heart out:
http://glen_gordon.tripod.com/LANGUAGE/NOSTRATIC/nostratic_sketch.html
But... this is all fun speculation for now until I write a
very thick book ;)
Ya know, Burushaski is a fun language to learn about "gender",
George. It has four genders. The language also has some unintuitive
and even sometimes downright amusing gender classifications.
- gLeN
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