"Head" is still neutral gender in Romanian. "One head" -> m, "two heads" -> f.
The author explains their argument for why Romanian neuter is not a true neuter but rather ambigenous (masculine in singular, feminine in plural).
The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
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Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#82Surprised 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 contr…
while the article is factually incorrect when claiming that Spanish has no neutral gender at all. It's also true that "lo" is seldom used in Spanish and there are almost no neutral nouns (like in german).
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Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
German will raise you the grammatically neuter “Mädchen”, meaning girl or maiden.
I’m reminded of the Mark Twain essay, The Awful German Language where he says:
“In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and what callous disrespect for the girl.”
Despite its age the essay* is well worth a read for native English speakers struggling to learn German.
* https://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/twain.german.html
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#84"Head" is still neutral gender in Romanian. "One head" -> m, "two heads" -> f.
The author explains their argument for why Romanian neuter is not a true neuter but rather ambigenous (masculine in singular, feminine in plural).
This is one of those difficult cases where you have to decide which terminology you want to use. The best approach is probably to just accept that there are two different ways to define ‘gender’, as described by e.g. Aikhenvald (2000):
> The number of surface realizations of genders (target genders) can be different from types of agreement (controller genders). In Rumanian nouns divide into three gender classes. There are two surface markers of genders in singular and two in the plural, but three combinations of these … Thus, there are two target genders and three controller genders (or agreement classes).
It’s worth noting that such systems are not at all unusual, unlike what the article implies: Telugu, Somali, Khinalug and Burmeso all provide examples of such systems. I certainly don’t agree with the article that the Romanian neuter isn’t a ‘proper’ gender: it’s just that it’s a controller gender rather than a target gender.
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#85>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…
so the origin of masculine feminine in IE is weird. The issue is that Hittite, the oldest attested IE language has two genders animate and inanimate. These are very very conventional. The sea Aruna is animate, but a grindstone is inanimate! Tocharian also has evidence of the animate inanimate split, but tocharian is such a mess no one knows what to make of it. All other IE language families (besides the weirdos like…
> The sea Aruna is animate, but a grindstone is inanimate!
Is this supposed to be weird? A grindstone won't do anything unless you put considerable effort into making it move. But you can go look at the sea and watch it constantly crashing into the shore, to say nothing of rising and falling with the tides.
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#86>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…
Farsi has hints of this. I don't think any linguist would argue that Farsi is a gendered language (it does not even have gendered pronouns), but there are two instances where one could argue remnants of an animate/inanimate gender system remains: 1. Farsi has two suffixes that make a noun plural (I am going to write things semi-phonetically): huh and un . Huh can be used for absolutely everything. Un can only be used…
> You can use third person singular verb conjugation for third person plural subjects, but only if the subject is non-living.
This does seem likely to be a relic of something in the past, since nearly the same thing is true in classical Greek - neuter plural subjects agree with singular verbs, not plural verbs. (You weren't clear about whether singular conjugation is required for nonliving subjects in Farsi. I believe singular agreement for neuter plural subjects is mandatory in Greek.)
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#87One thing that fascinates me are latin 1st declension masculine occupational nouns: pirata, nauta, poeta... Both pirata and poeta at least, take "il" in italian. Nauta it seems, did not survive.
I'm even more interested in the fact that Latin tree names are second declension feminine. Pinus, quercus, etc. How did that work out?
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a good explanation for how these came to develop? I've heard it explained by saying that "they're typically men's spheres" as rationale from my brief exposure to the language, but this seems deeply unsatisfying for a variety of reasons - id est, in comparison to something along the lines of loanword/archaism/evolution of root/evolution of grammatic gender.
There is no rule in Latin that 1st declension nouns (i.e most nouns ending in -a) like nauta, pirata, pirata, etc must be feminine —- morphology and gender are independent. There was merely a strong tendency for them to be feminine, but as you can see there are exceptions. In short, -a does not mean feminine. Another factor is that all three of those nouns are loanwords from Ancient Greek, which had quite a few 1st d…
> In short, -a does not mean feminine.
Weeeellll... Latin doesn't distinguish nounal case endings from adjectival case endings. (I believe Russian does, which makes resolving certain grammatical questions much easier.)
But the gender of a noun is defined by the gender of an adjective that agrees with the noun. So quercus alta, a tall oak tree, is unambiguously feminine, despite ending in -us, because we can see that the adjective agreeing with it is feminine.
How do we know the adjective is feminine? That's easy, it ends in -a, and -a means feminine.
This tends not to support the theory that "-a does not mean feminine". :-/
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was hoping someone here would be able to explain it to me!
No explanation, but Spanish has some similar things with the -ista suffix (e.g., jornalista = journalist, Zapatista = follower of Zapata, etc.). In Latin, those nouns are grammatically feminine and would be referred to with feminine pronouns and modified with feminine adjectives. There are a handful of first-declension names that take masculine pronouns and adjectives, none of which spring to mind at the moment.
> In Latin, those nouns are grammatically feminine and would be referred to with feminine pronouns and modified with feminine adjectives.
This is not correct; dnautics mentioned a set of nouns which are common and always masculine. Textbooks generally cover this set specifically. Wheelock provides a list and the acronymic mnemonic UNUS NAUTA, which -- it points out -- doubles as a way to emphasize that nauta is masculine, not feminine.
Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter
#90German is not a romance language yet had heavy influences from Latin. The neuter "das" is alive and kicking, no sign whatsoever of disappearance.
It's das Haus (the house), das Kind (the child)