gender

[George A Mantzoukis]

Dear Glen Gordon and IE-ists,

The opinion that "Originally, (P)IE distinguished between animate/inanimate
gender" appears to be quite popular and it has been expressed by list
members in the past.

On Sat, 23 May 1998, Peter Whale wrote

> 6.  Grammatical gender itself may be a development within early PIE,
> perhaps from a yet earlier animate / inanimate distinction.

and

On Thursday, 04 Feb 1999, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote

> Originally, PIE distinguished between animate and inanimate
> (neuter) gender.  The split of the animate gender into masculine
> and feminine is a later development, which e.g. Hittite did not
> participate in.

On the other hand someone might argue that "in PIE no gender distinction
existed at all" or as you (Glen Gordon) put it some time ago ( on Sat, 23
May 1998 )

> ................................................... I would argue that IE
> originally started out with no gender distinction at all, like Uralic.

On Thursday, 04 March 1999, you (Glen Gordon) wrote

> ... I'm sure you must have come across the idea that the feminine is
> not archaic but derivative from the previous animate/inanimate
> distinctions found in Anatolian lgs.

If I am interpreting you right, Glen, you think that
1) IE originally started out with no gender distinction at all
2) Animate/inanimate distinctions developed sometime "later".

When do you think these distincions developed? Was it within PIE and the
Anatolian group inherited it, or was it within Proto-Anatolian?

The animate/inanimate distinction does not appear to apply to Greek.  Greek
nouns are classified according to g r a m m a t i c a l gender in three
"genders" or "classes" ie., masculine, feminine and neutral.  Because of
the coincidence of masculine and feminine endings, masculine and feminine
are classified together in a common class.  The neuter forms its own class
with its own endings. This classification of Greek nouns in two classes is
not based on animate/inanimate distinctions.  Both classes contain very
large numbers of animate as well as inanimate nouns.  The "common gender"
contains probably more inanimate than animate nouns. The neuter contains
animate nouns like the third declension tek-os (offspring ) or the second
declension tek-n-on (offspring) or plas-ma (creature) or thy-ma (victim) or
zo:-on (animal) or kte:-n-os (beast) or ...... All these are of indifferent
(or irrelevant) natural gender.  It is very difficult to associate the
"animate gender" with the "common gender" and the  "inanimate gender" with
the "neuter".  The same arguments apply to Latin.  ( It is probably worth
noticing that even the Latin word "a n i m a l" does not belong to the
Latin common class but to the neuter)

Are there any good arguments in favor of animate/inanimate distinctions in
Greek or Latin?

[ Moderator's note:
  A language that distinguishes animate/inanimate may also distinguish gender
  --the two are not mutually exclusive.  The claim for an animacy distinction
  in PIE is based on lexical distinctions such as *egnis "fire (animate)" vs.
  *pur "fire (inanimate)", *ak^wa "water (a.)" vs. *wodr/wednes "water (in.)".

  The distinction of common vs. neuter gender in Hittite is defined by the
  presence of distinct endings for neuter nouns in some cases, unrelated to the
  issues in Latin and Greek (where there are different endings associated with
  the "masculine" and "feminine" genders, shown by adjective concord of o-stem
  adjectives when modifying non-o-stem nouns, and there is no common gender).

  I think your question arises from a confusion of these various systems as
  being somehow interchangeable.  They are not.
  --rma ]