On Thu, 13 Nov 2003 04:04:28 +0000, Glen Gordon <
glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>While the numeral "seven" in IE contains fossilized Semitic suffixes that
>show that it was the masculine form, the numeral "six" would seem to
>correlate with the _feminine_ form. (PS: For those who forgot or don't
>know, *-t- is normally a feminine suffix in Semitic but in numerals, it is
>the reverse and is used to mark the _masculine_ form. This is because
>the seemingly feminine numeral goes with the masculine noun and
>vice versa -- a kind of gender-pairing agreement.)
This applies to the numbers 3-10 (1 is an adjective with normal gender
agreement and 2 is a noun in the dual with dual case and gender agreement).
The gender disagreement in the numbers 3-10 is in fact only apparent. The
suffix -at(u) is not only a feminine marker, but also a plural/collective.
The noun being counted is in the genitive plural, so "3 X's" in the
masculine was:
*Tala:T-at-u X-i:-n
with the numeral in the nom. of the plural collective (-at-u) and the noun
in the gen. of the (broken) plural (-i:-).
The feminine we would have expected to be:
**Tala:T-at-u X-a:t-i,
but is in fact:
**Tala:T-u X-a:t-i,
with deletion of one instance of the suffix -a(:)t-. We can compare the
deletion in the feminine plural of the plural definiteness marker -n.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...