--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
> Don't thematic adjectives of two terminations (i.e. idnetical
> msculine and feminine) argue for the feminine being 'recent'?
The funny thing is that this applies only to thematic adjectives,
and only to compounds. Thus it is very far from being the whole
story of the feminine of adjectives in Greek. Normally one would
perhaps say that the *thematic* adjectives are the youngest type of
the language. But if that is the case why was the feminine of the
young type structured according to an older fashion than the one
prevailing when it was formed? Or, if non-marking of the feminine
was the correct fashion when thematic compounds were formedd as a
type, why do athematic compounds mark the feminine, and by a
different and ablauting suffix //-yeH2-// at that? These are
questions of very high relevance to the issue that have not been
addressed, indeed not even recognized as problems, by most of those
who just blast out their preconceived message that the feminine is
an innovation not shared by Anatolian.
If what the non-Anatolian branch of the disintegrating IE unity did
was to extend the concept of the collective to include the concept
of feminine, and this nicely explains the double use of, say, *néw-a-
H2 as NA.pl.ntr and N.sg.fem of 'new', the question arises why the
same speakers did not do the same with athematic adjectives:
Why is it that speakers who used, e.g., a form in *-u-H2 as ntr.pl.,
could not use the same form for the feminine, but felt occasioned to
form a longer form in *-éw-iH2/*-w-yéH2-? And how can an archaic
form of the nt-participle like Ved. táks.a:, -a:nam, Gk. tékto:n, -
o:na form its fem. as Gk. téktaina, while the renewed form in *-ont-
s formed its fem. as *-nt-iH2? Can both of these rounds of feminine
divation credibly be located in the chronology applying only to
periods after the fission of the old unity which is also a prestage
of Anatolian?
I do not have an answer to these last questions which must be
answered on the basis of an analysis of the morphological formations
they represent. That apparently takes the matter back to a very
remote period, making it almost inconceivable that Anatolian could
have branched off already. If n-stems in *-o:n of participial
function made their own feminine before the type was standardized in
the form that has nom. *-ont-s, the feminine was there before
Anatolian broke off, for *-ont-s is reflected in Anatolian. These
matters are never addressed, why is that??
I do have a guess at a scenario for the "Adjektive zweier Endungen".
The fact that the matter applies only to the second part of
compounds ought to be considered, and I guess it holds the very key.
The only type of adjectival compounds that can be demonstrated to
belong to the protolanguage are the bahuvri:his, the
type "barefoot". In archaic remains of such adjectives it is
observed that o-stems are replaced by i-stems: Ved. dhu:má-gandhi-
'having the smell (gándha-) of smoke', Lat. insignis 'having a sign
(signum) in it, remarkable', OIr. sonairt (i-st.) 'having good
strength' (nert o-st.), Arm. angorc (i-st.) 'having no work' (gorc o-
st.), etc. Now, i-stem adjectives use the same form for the feminine
as they do for the masculine (so do s-stems). There are no
adjectival i-stems in Greek at all, but they are normal elsewhere
and must have been replaced in Greek by one of the types that do
survive. The only easy solution is that it was the surprisingly
gender-immune o-stem type that replaced the *old* gender-immune i-
stem adjective type which was (in many cases) a morphological
replacement of o-stems in the first place. So it would reflect a
cleanup of the Caland mess.
> I
> think the same could be said for the various feminine-only
> adjectives that occur in Greek.
What is meant by this?
> Of course, the feminine gender's being recent does not mean it was
> not present in Proto-Indo-Hittite, but does make it plausible as
an
> innovation of the IE branch.
I am inclined to say that this is taking the fear of conflicts to
new heights. The whole quarrel is over whether or not Hittite lost
the feminine or never had it. Some insist it was never formed, while
I say they don't really know that as well as they apparently want to
make it appear. We cannot all be right.
My arguments for the antiquity of the feminine are as follows:
1. The fem. of athematic is formed by a suffix //-yeH2-// which
shows ablaut. The process that brought about ablaut was long over
when Anatolian broke off from the rest of IE, for wordforms ablaut
in Anatolian just as they do in the other branches.
2. The suffix used to mark the feminine of athemetic adjectives was
not used as a collective marker. Yet the "late-feminine" theory says
it is just a late use of a collective marker.
3. The feminine marker *-iH2 may in fact be reflected in Anatolian,
namely in the socalled "Motions-i" (or "mutation i") which is used
in many paradigms in the strong non-neuter cases. The exact course
of the process leading to this state of affairs however still awaits
its final explanation. But that should be equally embarrassing to
those who claim they *know* it is not the old feminine - on what
grounds have they made that decision? I find it relatively
unproblematic to equate the stem of Hittite mekk-i-s 'big' with the
feminine *meg^-H2-iH2- (Skt. mahí:). What would that give other than
an i-stem, and where else could the i-stem come from?
4. The Hitt. conjunctions ma:n 'when' and mahhan 'as' look to me
exactly like Latin quom and quam, only from a different pronominal
stem. They would surely be analyzed *mo-m, *ma-H2-m, were it not for
the controversial status of the feminine. They may be cases of
retention of a category otherwise abolished, just as there are old
caseforms lying around among the adverbs in IE langauges that have
lost case inflection.
I am not sure this is enough to prove the prior existence of the
feminine as a separate gender category for a prestage of Anatolian,
but the matter is hardly decided by simply passing over it in
silence.
Jens