gender

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

"roslyn frank" <roslynfrank at hotmail.com> wrote:

>Because of my interest in this particular question, I wonder if anyone
>could speculate on when (along a rough time continuum) gender entered IE
>languages, i.e., when (P)IE acquired gender.

The lack of feminine gender in Hittite (Anatolian) suggests that
the PIE three-gender system (masculine, feminine, neuter) is
datable to the time between the split-off of Anatolian and the
break-up of the rest of IE (beginning with Tocharian).

Of course before that time, PIE also had gender: animate vs.
inanimate.  We cannot reconstruct a genderless stage of PIE.

>And finally, has anyone contemplated the possibility that there might
>have been an even earlier stage that needs to be reconstructed (e.g.
>perhaps in the case of Euskera) that eventually gave rise to a
>animate/inanimate dichotomy (e.g., as it is found today in Euskera)?

The Basque case is very different from the case of (P)IE, where
gender distinctions (inanimate / animate => masculine/feminine)
were quite central to the entire (pro)nominal system (nominative/
accusative cases, adjective agreement, verbal agreement, etc.)

The animate/inanimate distinction in Basque is heavily
"localized".  Pun intended: the only place in Basque grammar
where animacy plays a role is in the formation of the local cases
[locative, allative, ablative etc.], where animate NP's add the
local suffixes to the genitive + -gan-/-baita-, e.g. "to the
house" etxe-(r)a, "to the man" gizon-aren-gan-a.  This has always
reminded me of something that I was inculcated as a child.
Growing up in a Spanish family in Holland, certain Dutchisms
tended to creep into our (my siblings and mine's) speech, which
my father was constantly combatting.  One of them was saying "Voy
a Juan" [I go to John] (Dutch "Ik ga naar Jan toe"), which my
father always corrected to "Voy a ver a Juan" [I'm going to see
John] or "Voy a casa de Juan" [I'm going to John's house].  It
seems that Castilian also doesn't normally allow a
locative/directional preposition followed directly by an animate
noun (phrase).

The masculine/feminine distinction in Basque is even more
restricted and mysterious: it only applies to the ergative/dative
pronominal suffixes of the verb in the second person singular
(-k/-ga- "you (masc)", -n/-na- "you (fem)").

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam