From: Torsten
Message: 66436
Date: 2010-08-12
>The rules in Danish for assignment of gender to new loans are mostly heuristic, sometimes grammatical (based on eg. recognizable suffixes, sometimes semantic; 'ikon' [ikó?n] is common gender in the old sense of Russian orthodox image, neuter in the newly adopted sense "idol", possibly influenced by the neuter gender of 'billede' or 'forbillede'.
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "andythewiros" <anjarrette@> wrote:
> > > 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.
> >
>
>
> Your answer has been most informative.