Re: Feminization of plurals?

2009/2/11 Edgard Bikelis <bikelis@...>

> On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 9:05 AM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <tsela.cg@
> gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > >
> > What I've read is that feminines were actually a conflation of inanimate
> > collective nouns in -h2 (indeed, whether it was an actual plural suffix
> or
> > a
> > collective suffix is in question, although for the purpose of the rise of
> > the feminine gender it might not be that important, given that Romance
> > languages didn't have that much difficulty reanalysing neuter plurals
> into
> > feminine singulars) and animate nouns with a stem ending in -h2, which
> > seemingly referred mostly to semantically female concepts (woman,
> goddess,
> > that sort of words. Whether that was coincidence or a specific meaning of
> > an
> > animate -h2 ending, I don't know, and it's not important here).
> >
> > In other words, the phenomenon that gave rise to the feminine gender in
> PIE
> > ends up looking very similar to the phenomenon in Romance languages that
> > resulted in some plural neuter nouns being reanalysed as feminine
> singular:
> > surface forms looking similar end up being reanalysed as a single
> category,
> > and take on the characteristics of only one of the original groups.
>
>
> It's easy to see plural collectives becoming singular feminines with
> collective meaning... like if hoard from gold, people from person, army
> from
> soldier.

As the Portuguese examples earlier in this thread show.


> But how can *gWen(e)h2 'woman' rise from something like it? (there
> is no neuter conterpart, as far as I know)? The feminines like *h1ek'weh2
> from *h2ek'wos must be due to analogy... unless 'necklace' from 'hoard' is
> indeed possible...
>

According to the info I have, *gWen(e)h2 was always *animate*, and only
coincidentally ends in -h2 (unless it is a second -h2 ending, animate this
one, and different from the -h2 *inanimate* collective/plural suffix). That
-h2 is not the collective suffix inanimate nouns used.

Another possibility is semantic drift. I remember reading of a language
where the word for "woman" actually derives from the expression "belonging
to the house" (I can't remember which language it is though). In a strongly
patriarchal society, women could be seen as nothing more than moving
furniture, something belonging to the household and meant to stay there.
Now, in a similar fashion, imagine a word meaning "household item". It would
be inanimate. A collective form of it would mean "collection of household
items", within which a woman would belong. Then by semantic drift (a kind of
inverse metonymy?), that general form could have drifted to refer only to
the woman, who hopefully would be considered as a special, prominent
"household item".

Of course, it's just a thought, but it shows that deriving "woman" from an
inanimate collective is not out of the question. I've seen weirder
derivations.


>
>
> > In this
> > case, inanimate collective nouns ending in -h2 got confused with
> > semantically female animate nouns ending in -h2 (probably because the
> > animate/inanimate distinction was losing its semantic meaning. Even in
> PIE
> > the distinction is only partially semantic), and they all ended up being
> > reanalysed as a single group. Since prominent members of that group
> > (including the word for "woman") were semantically female, the whole
> group
> > became a "feminine" gender.
>
>
> I see, but they must have had this category _before_ all the confusion, not
> because of it...
>

Not necessarily. Who knows how long the confusion lasted, how long it took
for the animate/inanimate distinction to mutate into
masculine/feminine/neuter? Moreover, we need to take into account the
*feeling* of the speakers of the language. When do they stop watching the
world as a collection of animate vs. inanimate concepts, and start thinking
of it as a collection of masculine, feminine and neuter concept? As I've
shown with the Dutch example, those two could actually coexist for a while
(Dutch had arguably no common gender until a short while ago, and most Dutch
people would still not recognise its existence, but think of
masculine/feminine/neuter categories, despite the fact that their language
usage shows something else).

So the category needn't have existed before the confusion. It can easily
arise from it, especially if the confusion lasts for a long time (Dutch has
been in the process of overhauling its gender system for generations
already, and it's still not finished), and only slowly take over.


>
> Languages change at different rates... see Icelandic.
>
>
True. It's impressive how much Modern Greek has kept intact of the original
Ancient Greek syntax and grammar, while in the same time frame Latin has
completely overhauled everything that gave it its identity. The "distance"
between French and Latin is many times more than the "distance" between
Ancient and Modern Greek, while both evolved during the same time frame.
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.

http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/