Re: OT: Berber syllabification; feminine and diminutive

I don't know much about Berber or Ethiopian, but all Russian diminutives for
personal names are in the feminine.
Eugene

On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 8:20 AM, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>wrote:

> I'm reading a little about Berber, and I remembered that once I was reading
> the Wikipedia page on some Berber language and it said syllabification of
> resonants in it was very similar to the reconstructed rules of
> syllabification for PIE. But now I can't find it. Does anyone know where I
> might have seen it? (All I remember is it was on Wikipedia, it was in an
> article itself, and the discussion page for that article said something
> about it.)
>
> Also, Wikipedia's page "Berber languages" says "the feminine (also used to
> form diminutives and singulatives, like an ear of wheat)". I believe I've
> run across another example of a language where the feminine functioned as a
> diminutive; it was something Ethiopian. Is this common cross-linguistically?
> Is it likely that feminine marking often comes from diminutive marking? Or
> vice versa?
>