--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Gordon Selway <gordonselway@...>
wrote:
> The following exchange has recently appeared on another list, and
> given the subject matter I wondered whether it would be worth
posting
> here for responses.
>
> <<Q. If a noun is of a given gender in Old Irish. must it be so
in
> other Indo-European languages?
>
> A. Not on the evidence of "dét" (tooth), which is neuter in OI,
> while Skt. "danta" and Latin "dens, dentis" are both masculine.
On
> the other hand, there is often agreement: ainmm (OI), nomen (Lat.)
> and nâman (Skt.) are all neuter, while ech, equus, and asva are
all
> three masculine.
>
> OI "cride" (heart) and Lat. "cor, cordis" are both neuter, but
Greek
> "kardía" is fem. But the Greek word historically has a -yâ
suffix,
> while the Latin does not, so are they really the "same" noun?
>
> An Indo-Europeanist, which I emphatically am not, could give us
all a
> better answer, I'm sure -- provided they're not all currently out
of
> station, as they say in India.>>
More detail perhaps, but not really different in kind. Gender can
be determined by form or by semantics, or can be totally arbitrary.
Neuters ought to be stable, for many of them can be identified by
one or more of the lack of a nominative ending in -s and the lack of
an accusative singular in -m. Instability can set in once these
characteristics are lost by phonetic attrition.
For masculine v. feminine distinctions, the rule o-stems masculine,
a-stems feminine is the soundest rule by form. Semantic rules can
override the rules by form - Latin a-stem agent nouns are masculine
and Latin o-stem tree names are feminine. (You have to know how a
noun is inflected - Heinlein's 'Tellus Tertius' makes me wince.)
Suffixes can change the gender - German diminutives are the most
notorious, e.g. _Magt_ (f.) 'maid' but_Mädchen_ (n.) 'maiden'. The
Romance languages show the same phenomenon - Latin _auris_
(f.) 'ear' but Italian _orecchio_ (m.) from diminutive *auriculum.
Curiously enough, Classical Latin had a feminine diminutive (?)
_auricula_ 'outer ear'.
The resolution of conflicts can change over time. For example, the
Latin rule that tree names are feminine has been overridden by form,
so that we have Latin _pi:nus_ (f.) but French _pin_ (f.) 'pine-
tree'. (Actually, _pi:nus_ has both o-stem and u-stem forms, but
_ma:lus_ (f.) 'apple tree' only has o-stem forms.). Indeed, Latin
_arbor_ (earlier arbo:s), _arboris_ (f.) has been attracted by the
trule that nouns in -or are masculine, and so we have French _arbre_
(m.).
Contrariwise, in Latin the rule that nouns in -or were maculine
rather than feminine overrode the rule that abstract nouns were
feminine. In French, the rule that abstract nouns are feminine has
been given precedence, so we have Latin _color_ (m.) 'colour' but
French _couleur_ (f.). Italian and Spanish are more conservative,
so we have Italian _colore_ (m.) and Spanish _color_ (m.).
The plural of neuter nouns had a feminine singular form in the
nominative and accusative plural, and that can have helped shift the
gender - Latin _folium_ (n.) 'leaf' but French _feuille_ (f.), from
the neuter plural _folia_. Interestingly, Italian has _foglio_
(m.) 'sheet (of paper, metal)', but _folgia_ (f.) 'leaf'.
Arbitrary gender allocations are probably the least stable. Latin
_mare_ 'sea' is neuter, as is to be expected from its form, but
although Italian _mare_ and Spanish _mar_ are masculine, French
_mer_ is feminine. The modern Romance forms no longer give any
indication of what its gender should be. This is attributed to the
influence of _terre_ (f.) ground, but I'm not sure why this hasn't
happened in the other languages. _mer_ and _terre_ have only rhymed
for a few centuries.
Gender determining suffixes can vanish. Masculine _sol_ (m.)
(Latin, Italian, Old English) contrasts with the feminine _Sonne_ of
German. In Proto-Germanic, the word had the feminine suffix -o:n-,
thus *sunno:n. Old English had both masculine _sunna_ and feminine
_sunne_.
Although individual shifts in gender often have explanations (at
least as part of a trend), the gender in one language is not a sure
guide to the gender of the cognate word in another. Perhaps the
best comment on this is the suggestion that the people of West
Jutland have a poor grasp of Danish gender assignments because their
dialect has switched from being South Germanic to being North
Germanic, possibly an inverse process to the abosorption of the
Danes in England. In the case of the descendants of PIE
*ekwos 'horse', the form kept the gender consistent. However,
German _name_ 'name' (and Old English _nama_) were masculine not
neuter, while Old Norse _namn_ / _nafn_ and Gothic _namo_ were
neuter, so not even the M/F v. N distinction is secure.
PIE is generally reckoned to have has only two genders - animate,
and inanimate, the latter becoming neuter. Only the non-Anatolian
languages developed a distinction between masculine and feminine.
Thus a gender assignment to masculine or feminine can only be traced
back to non-Anatolian IE. (I think it was a grave error to
prematurely drop the term Indo-Hittite - it left us without a snappy
term for non-Anatolian IE). Greek presumably shows a trace of the
previous state of affairs in that some adjectives use masculine
forms for the feminine gender. _rhododactylos e:o:s_ 'rosy-fingered
dawn' is the best known example. Can anyone explain how the gender,
i.e. the agreement patterns, came to split?
Richard.