Re: IE Thematic Vowel Rule

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "squilluncus" <grvs@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>

wrote:

>
> > And here's an idea: since in IE Nordwestblock there was no rule

*-k

> > > *-x (proof: padde, paddock ; Made, madikke, maggot) there was

no

> > vowel-ending new stem on which to base a feminine gender. Which

is

> > why the Northern Germanic languages (ie. North and West Germanic
> > minus High German) have a tendency towards losing the feminine;

the

> > occupied masses never learned it (or the point of it).
>
> Well, you can't include the Skagerack-Kattegatt area in this
> genderindifference.
> In fact, Swedish dialects on Danish substratum - and adjacent

ones! -

> are even today more sensible to masculine/feminine distinction, if

not

> in articles, but for sure in definite adjective-constructions:
> den glöttig-e pågen, den glöttig-a tösen;
> Kristian den först-e, Margareta den andr-a
>

I didn't know that was a Scanian thing?

Actually, according to Brøndum-Nielsen, North Sjælland, which is
closest to present Sweden, had only two genders. But in his story of
his life, the murderer Ole Nielsen Kollerød, the last to be executed
by the axe in Denmark some time in the beginning of the 19th
century, distinguishes sharply and etymologically correctly,
between 'dend' m. /deñ/ and 'den' /den/ f. "that (one), the".

There's no f. in colloquial speech in Danish as in Swedish,
no '... klockan, hon är fem' "the clock (time), she is five", it's
all dialectal. I wonder sometimes how much the (imperfect) two-
gender situation in Swedish is due to Danish influence in the Kalmar
Union times. I read somewhere that the orthography of Vadstena was
very influential, the monastery of St. Birgitha who was a personal
friend of the union queen Margaretha.


Torsten