The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
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The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
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Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#2>The neuter gender is very old indeed, arguably older than the other two genders. Through the systematic comparison of ancient languages, we believe that Proto-Indo-European, in its oldest reconstructable state, had only two gender-like categories for its nouns: animate and inanimate (that is, for moving and not-moving things). It was the inanimate that became the neuter gender in its descendant languages, while the animate would later split into two further genders. This is the system that Latin inherited.
That is super interesting to me. But I wonder how they defined moving versus non-moving things? At first I was thinking moving meant living things like animals, but a car moves. Of course, they didn't have cars/trains/etc. back then. But they did have boats (probably). Are boats moving or non-moving? And there are certain animals that don't ever move (especially in the oceans). Would they be moving or non-moving?
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#3>The neuter gender is very old indeed, arguably older than the other two genders. Through the systematic comparison of ancient languages, we believe that Proto-Indo-European, in its oldest reconstructable state, had only two gender-like categories for its nouns: animate and inanimate (that is, for moving and not-moving things). It was the inanimate that became the neuter gender in its descendant languages, while the…
The grammatical gender of nouns is mostly arbitrary. A famous example is "key", which is feminine in Italian and Spanish but masculine in German. This is also the case in Latin with its neuter. My Latin is very rusty, but IIRC from high school, there are a lot of nouns that refer to "neuter" things, but are actually masculine or feminine, for example "vis" (= strength) is feminine.
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#4>The neuter gender is very old indeed, arguably older than the other two genders. Through the systematic comparison of ancient languages, we believe that Proto-Indo-European, in its oldest reconstructable state, had only two gender-like categories for its nouns: animate and inanimate (that is, for moving and not-moving things). It was the inanimate that became the neuter gender in its descendant languages, while the…
Germanic languages (with their retained neutral gender) are probably a good place to start looking at this.
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#5Surprised the article didn't mention the Spanish definite article lo, which can be paired with a masculine adjective to form a nominal phrase meaning the abstract notion of the adjective: lo mismo - the same [thing], lo bueno - the good, that which is good. My understanding is this derives from the Latin neuter as well.
Edit: why on earth is this being downvoted? Seriously confused - is something here wrong or controversial?
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#6>The neuter gender is very old indeed, arguably older than the other two genders. Through the systematic comparison of ancient languages, we believe that Proto-Indo-European, in its oldest reconstructable state, had only two gender-like categories for its nouns: animate and inanimate (that is, for moving and not-moving things). It was the inanimate that became the neuter gender in its descendant languages, while the…
I'm not sure that moving versus not moving is the right dichotomy, despite what the article says. "Animate" itself comes from the proto IE root *ani- meaning "to breathe" so it could refer to things perceived of at the time as breathing, which includes most larger animals.
But as others have noted, even in ancient times, the relationship between the gender of the word and the thing it represented in the real world was highly fossilized and often arbitrary outside of personal pronouns and a few animal names of agricultural importance (cow vs. bull).
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#7>The neuter gender is very old indeed, arguably older than the other two genders. Through the systematic comparison of ancient languages, we believe that Proto-Indo-European, in its oldest reconstructable state, had only two gender-like categories for its nouns: animate and inanimate (that is, for moving and not-moving things). It was the inanimate that became the neuter gender in its descendant languages, while the…
The grammatical gender of nouns is mostly arbitrary. A famous example is "key", which is feminine in Italian and Spanish but masculine in German. This is also the case in Latin with its neuter. My Latin is very rusty, but IIRC from high school, there are a lot of nouns that refer to "neuter" things, but are actually masculine or feminine, for example "vis" (= strength) is feminine.
“mostly arbitrary”
I’ll say: el clítoris.
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#8>The neuter gender is very old indeed, arguably older than the other two genders. Through the systematic comparison of ancient languages, we believe that Proto-Indo-European, in its oldest reconstructable state, had only two gender-like categories for its nouns: animate and inanimate (that is, for moving and not-moving things). It was the inanimate that became the neuter gender in its descendant languages, while the…
i'd categorize boat as inanimated. my experience is that "moving" means self-moving in this context. also languages are generally fuzzy on edge cases. a static sea creature may be inanimated in grammatical sense eventhough it's live. it depends on what it the most resembles to to the people who first name it: does it look like more of a rock or more of a snail? "oh, it turned out that rock-like thing is a snail something in a hard shell? never mind everyone call it sea-rock by now."
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#9English native speaker here (en_GB!) However, I have studied Latin, both classical: "Cicero sic in omnibus, Brutus aderat." and medieval: Erasmus, as he toddled around Europe, drank nearly as much red wine as I do. I've also failed French and German O levels (old UK exam at age 15.)
So, Latin generally had M, F and N. Modern French (Romance language du jour) ostensibly has M and F. Modern Germanic languages have .... OK:
- German M,F,N. - English - nouns don't have a gender - Dutch - I don't know - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_Dutch_grammar could be complicated - I've run out of language knowledge here
So that was scientific.
The article notes that proto-indo-european only had animate and inanimate and that is not the same as gender. Animate here is "alive". A human and a tree are animate but a rock is inanimate. Rocks (outside of Terry Pratchett books do not procreate).
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#10I was surprised at the lack of mention of Russian there, currently being the 8th most spoken language in the world, in which neuter nouns are quite common. A quick glance at Wiktionary (for lack of a better source) shows that about 14% of the most common Russian words nouns are neuter[0].
[0]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Russian_nouns_by_gen...