IE neu. pl., was: IE genders

On Fri, 7 Jul 2000 06:43:18 +0100, Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
wrote:

>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.
Note, however, that the neuter plural ending and the nom. sg. ending of
aa-stems are not perfect homonyms in Proto-IE. In Greek, neu. pl. never
becomes [e:], in Proto-Slavic the two endings had different accentological
qualities (IIRC), and there were some differences between them in other
IE branches.


Basilius