--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:
>
> This creation of a new declensional system for feminines could only
> arise once a gender contrast between masculine and feminine became
> grammatical within nouns. However, that new gender system in the
> nouns could only crystallize once the use of *-ex as a feminine
> rather than just a collective or diminutive had arisen. It was that
> latter stage where *-ex was merely a collective or diminutive that
> Anatolian presumably split away towards Turkey, just before
feminine
> gender developped in the other dialects.
Well, it's nice to see that someone knows. To get the full benefit
of that I would like to ask what the diminutive is doing here - what
examples are meant?
On a more serious note I would like to call attention to the facts
put forward in an article by J.J.S. Weitenberg in 1987 (in MSS).
Basing himself on a monograph by Starke on the "dimensional" cases
in Hittite, Weitenberg points out that Hittite nouns of common
gender (as defined by the concord of adjectives) fall into two
categories, depending on their semantics, viz. animates and
inanimates, and their syntax: The animates do not form the
directive, the ablative and the instrumental, but use either the
dat./loc. (for dir. and abl.) or syntactic circumlocutions (for
instr.) instead, while inanimates have the whole roster of case
forms intact, just as neuters have. Now, the animates of common
gender are found to be masculines in the other branches, and the
inanimates are feminine. That is, the words that are feminine
outside of Anatolian are non-neuter words that share some semantic
and syntactic features with the neuters. Thus, there is a very high
degree of correlation between the gender system seen outside of
Anatolian and the facts of Anatolian itself. Both systems comprise
three classes.
The question is what to make of this. I see two extremes, possibly
both wrong: 1. Either the Hittite tripartite system represents a
prestage of a three-gender system which later grew to what is found
in the rest of IE. - 2. Or the Hittite system represents the ruins
of what we see elsewhere. - If 1 is chosen the feminines could have
arisen as singulatives, individualized items of what is otherwise
regarded as an undivided mass, "one from the multitude of -". The
concord with special feminine forms of adjectives seen in the other
branches would then represent a later outgrowth of a very untrivial
nature. That could be the true story of the rise of the feminine.
The first phase in its rise however will certainly have to be dated
to the shared prehistory of all the IE we know, including Anatolian,
and it will be the objective of refined analysis to make out how
much of the rest, if any, was also older than the separation. If 2
is chosen adjectival concord must be assumed to have been given up
in Anatolian, except for the few fiercely debated remains that have
been identified by some.
In the face of the difficulties involved in both extreme choices we
have a very tough problem, and some degree of modesty appears to be
in order.
Jens