On Hittite /s^ipta-/:
>Without the mimation. Aparently a loan from some other Semitic
>language.
That would violate logical parsimony. There is already a root *septm
reconstructed on the basis of countless other IE languages. The
Hittite form is unproblematically relatable to the very same root.
>I didn't know Etruscan had gender?
It's suspected that Etruscan might have an animate/inanimate contrast
like in Swedish or... IndoEuropean. For example, certain words like /un/
"libation" or *pulum "star", which happen to be inanimate objects,
materials or collectives, are given plurals in /-cHva/ while other more
"animate" nouns are given /-r/ like as with /clen/ "son". We never ever
see */clencHva/ nor do we see */unar/. This suggests that nouns might
be classified grammatically into two word classes or genders. Coincidently,
there seems to be a preference in given female names or nouns
describing women the l-genitive rather than the s-genitive. It would
seem to me that not only are the two genders distinguished by
different case endings in the genitive but that the concept of feminity
is treated grammatically more as a collective inanimate, hence the use
of this "inanimate genitive" in /-al/.
= gLeN
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