IE genders (was: WHICH IS MORE GERMANIC?)

At 9:26 am +0200 6/7/00, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
[....]
>
>Some people even take this as an indication that the general -s of
>masc/fem nominatives in IE was once the ergative case marker of some
>ancestor language:
>
>    Inimate subjects are most often absolutive (occurring with
>    intransitive verbs), and animate subjects are most often ergative
>    (occurring with transitive verbs).
>
>    So when the change to a nominative language happened, the animates
>    got the ergative -s in the nominative, the inanimates got the
>    absolutive --- and they all got absolutive marking in the
>    accusative. (And later, inanimate > neuter, animate > masculine).
>
>But personally, I don't think this is enough to prove that such a
>state ever existed. There must be other ways for the observed state of
>affairs to come about, such as an inanimate nominative marker that
>just happened to be lost.
I have come across this theory before.  It's interesting, but the feminine
nouns sort of get overlooked.

>What is more interesting to me is that there is a strong tendency in
>several IE languages for the neuter plural nom/acc of pronouns to be
>identical to the feminine singular nominative --- even if the ending
>isn't the -a that occurs in the -o/-a-stem nominal declinations.
>
>That would tend to confirm the theory that the feminines originated as
>collectives that were given a singular declination patterned on the -o
>stems.
Certainly I think there can be little doubt that neuter plurals were once
feminine singular collectives.  In ancient Greek, neuter plural nominatives
still required 3rd _singular_ verb agreement, only asc. & fem. using the
3rd plural.

I believe this was also the case in Sanskrit - tho I may be mistaken - and
occurs in the earliest forms of some other IE langs.

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
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