re Northern Subject Rule

Robert Orr colkitto at sprint.ca
Thu Dec 21 07:46:31 UTC 2000


Subject: Re: re Northern Subject Rule

On 14 Dec 2000, Rich Alderson wrote:

"Note that the feminine in *-a: < *-eH{_1} is formally identical to the
neuter plural = collective, which has led some to postulate a common origin,
with the semantics developing from "member of a herd" => "female".  This
proposal does not mesh well, in my opinion, with the proposal that the early
IE verb system was active/stative."

Then the "proposal that the early IE verb system was active/stative" needs
more work.  The common origin of the feminine *-a-stem nom sg and the neuter
*-o-stem pl is about as established as anything in IE studes can be, and is
typologically well supported.  I will take the liberty of quoting myself.

"The emergence of the new fem gender cannot be separated from the rise of
the *o -/ a-stem opposition, which underwent a great deal of development to
accommodate the new gender system.  The  *a -stem nom sg ending *-a
originally had collective meaning (some *-a  forms were eventually to evolve
into neut pl forms, with subsequent generalisation of *-a  as a neut nom/acc
pl ending; although still taking sg agreement in some instances), and in
some forms this meaning later shifted to individual.  It actually appears
that one of these forms, which may be reconstructed as IE *guen  (> Gk gune,
OCS  zena, Go qino, OIr ben 'woman', etc.), provided the impetus for the
formation of the new gender.  Miranda 1975 provides a partial outline of how
such an evolution could have taken place, citing Brugmann 1897, 1904:
354-62, 1911: 82-109, and citing the example of a development in Konkani as
a typological parallel, where the rise of a new fem gender (Miranda 1975:
209 fn.15 discusses the terminology for this new gender, tentatively
suggesting 'feminine juvenile') from the old neut can be traced back to one
form,  cedu , which has undergone the semantic change 'child' > 'girl'; see
also Weiss 1993: 91-94 for similar data from Polish.  Konkani is an
appropriate example; as Miranda shows, its gender system already has a long
evolution attested, traceable back to IE itself via Indo-Iranian and
Sanskrit.

One part of the proposed evolution that causes Miranda a little difficulty
involves the proposed shift from collective to individual ("Brugmann's other
(1897) suggestion that an original collective noun ending in *-a  might have
undergone a semantic change to denote a female (e.g., *ekwa  'mare'
developing from *ekwa 'drove of horses') is questionable since such changes
are hard to find"; 1975: 202 fn. 5).  Examples of such a shift, although
fairly rare, do actually exist: the Sele Fara dialect of Carinthian
Slovenian shows a form  zijstu in the meaning 'woman' < * zenistvo, which
originally had collective meaning, cf. also Ge Frauenzimmer 'woman'.  These
forms, taken together with Miranda's Konkani evidence, show that the entire
chain of development by which IE gender is said to have evolved according to
Brugmann and Miranda is possible, even if not very common.

(references available on request)

Robert Orr



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