From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 66432
Date: 2010-08-12
> Do you have any ideas re my earlier question, why "chair" (*sto:laz) should be masculine in gender in Gmc while "ship" (*skipam) or "vessel, container" (*fatam) should be neuter? Of course there are many other similar pairings in Gmc where the gender seems to be completely arbitrary.The gender assignment rules of PIE are obscure to me, and having *skipam rather than **skipaz may reflect the origin of the word when it was acquired by Germanic. I could claim that 'chair' is obviously animate - it has the same classifier in Thai as animals, apparently because it has legs. (Having arms is also grounds for that same classifier - and T-shirts count as having arms!) However, that suggestion needs similar examples for it to be taken seriously for PIE. If you wish to explore this idea, that classifier, _tua_, is the classifier for digits, bodies, shirts, trousers, suits, animals, fish, germs, chairs, tables, desks and software titles(?), to which I can add letters of the alphabet.