Re: Grammatical Gender

I read it and while it provides an entirely satisfactory explanation for the origin of feminine suffixes (<collectives), I'm still left wondering why *sto:laz should be masculine but *skipam should be neuter. They're both inanimate and both made by human beings. Why should there be a gender difference?

Andy

Not all languages do gender like German. In Romance languages, you don't have "neuterizing" endings such as -lein, etc. --definitely not for humans. 

BUT there are things such as 

silla "chair" vs. sillón "arm chair, easy chair"

avión (m.) "airplane" vs. avioneta "small propeller plane"

camión "truck" (m.) vs. camioneta "pick up, etc."

and then there are doublets such as 

charco "puddle" vs. charca "pool"

canasto "small basket, small wicker container" vs. canasta "hamper, big basket"

and so on.

My understanding is that only IE, AA and Khoi-San have grammatical gender

Is that true?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Etherman23" <etherman23@...> wrote:
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> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "andythewiros" <anjarrette@> wrote:
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> > Forgive me if I have earlier posted a like message.
> >
> > I would like to know whether there exists any treatise, essay, book, etc. that offers a plausible explanation for the origin of grammatical gender in the Indo-European languages.
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> > Can anyone help me?
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> You can try:
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> http://books.google.com/books?id=tO9YAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA5&dq=noun+gender+brugmann&hl=en&ei=jCteTIjEBoOBlAeK0OiZCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
>