The probability of Anatolian having reduced a three-gender system
into a animate_inanimate system:
When assessing the probability for this having taken place, in may be
useful to see if there exist examples of this in living languages.
Swedish and Danish are examples of modern languages with an animate-
inanimate classification system. At the same time Norwegian that is
so close to Swedish and Danish that it is nearly the same language,
still has the old three-gender system.
My native language is Norwegian. When waching what has occured nearly
in my own backyard in the last hundred years, I am sure the same
could have taken place when Anatolian broke away from the common
indoeuropean stock.
Of course that does not proove that this has taken place in
Anatolian, it only shows that such a transformation actually could
have taken place.
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