Re: S mobile (Was : PS Emphatics)

Earliest PIE had _no_ gender markings.
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Sure to be wrong.
the invention of grammatical gender :
that is to say : masculine versus feminine
dates back to the earliest stage of PAA
PAA including here PIE.

And a rather odd phenomenon is -a
initially was not a feminine ending
as shown by Hausa ruwa : "water"
in spite of its "tomâ" shape,
it's masculine.

Sometimes before PIE and Semitic split
most words ending with -a were reclassified
as feminine
unless they were obviously "male"
Greek naut-a

Arnaud
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Later, our ancestors being chauvinists par excellence, they introduced two
suffixes to designate females: -*tm 'one who accompanies the male doer named
in the root'; and -*(H)a:, which references a female's sexual
characteristics.

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I suppose,
Ha was an onomatopeia because of the odor....

tm
was (je) t'aime !!

Arnaud
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