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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

#111

Post by Mlller »

School-Cotton wrote: post #64
Mlller wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the expressions “moving” – “not-moving” are rather misleading. The actual distinction according to this theory (or to my favourite flavour of this theory) was: “able to act willfully” – “unable to act willfully”. The distinction was quite logical. Cp.: (A) “Susan runs down the hill.” (B) “Water runs down the hill.” (C) “Susan drinks water.” A speaker of Proto-Indo-European might have said, learning English: “Thi…

> all over the old IE languages, neuter nouns have the same form for the nominative and the accusative The lack of distinction between neuter nominative and neuter accusative is not just true of nouns in old IE languages. It's true of all grammatical categories in virtually all modern IE languages too (with some very obscure exceptions). Consider German articles der/den vs. das/das. Or English pronouns she/her vs. it…

Correct: According to the theory outlined above, no neutral form could have been a PIE nominative, because the PIE nominative would have been marked willfully acting entities. So the root cause would have been the distinction made for nouns (“can willfully act” – “cannot willfully act”), and this must affect all words with noun-agreement (i.e. adj., det.) or words substituting, deputizing nouns (i.e. pronouns).

It is wonderful that this formerly semantic system (if the theory is correct) has left its formal trace over millennia and a range of thousands of miles.

Such preservation was likely in so far as otherwise a new suffix-inflectional distinction had to be introduced in order to distinguish the nominative neuter from the accusative neuter; and in the history of the IE languages, suffix-inflectional distinctions are rather removed than built.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#112

Post by cgio »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #86
smnrchrds wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 believ…

Only Attiki syntax in Ancient Greek had this as a special form I believe and it was not limited to inanimate subjects. The classic example of this is τα παιδία παίζει , the children are playing.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#113

Post by thaumasiotes »

cgio wrote: post #112
thaumasiotes wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 believ…

Only Attiki syntax in Ancient Greek had this as a special form I believe and it was not limited to inanimate subjects. The classic example of this is τα παιδία παίζει , the children are playing.

I didn't mean to say it was limited to inanimate subjects. It's for neuter subjects. But we've been talking about a relationship between Indo-European neuter gender and inanimacy, so this still seems plausibly related.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#114

Post by qayxc »

derriz wrote: post #83
mattkrause wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Mark Twain was making fun - the essay isn't supposed to be taken seriously.

His conclusion would also be wrong, since the grammatical gender has nothing to do with he biological gender - it's the gender assigned to all diminutive forms, regardless of grammatical gender.

E.g. "der Vater" (the father) becomes "das Väterchen" just as well without loosing his proverbial balls in the process.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#116

Post by qayxc »

Swizec wrote: post #19
danans wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article notes that proto-indo-european only had animate and inanimate and that is not the same as gender Grammatically, it is the same. Grammatical gender does not refer to biological sex, but rather a categorization system of nouns and their associated inflection patterns. > Animate here is "alive". A human and a tree are animate but a rock is inanimate. Outside of words for humans (and even there there are ex…

> Grammatically, it is the same. Grammatical gender does not refer to biological sex, but rather a categorization system of nouns and their associated inflection patterns. Yep, a chair is male in Slovenian, but tree is neuter. Cats are feminine, dogs are male. Studying German and French I quickly learned that their categories are different. You have to memorize the gender together with noun. Often you can guess corre…

Yeah, it's a common joke in German that you can't tell someone's gender by looking at their face: the nose is female ("die Nase"), the mouth is male ("der Mund") and the eyes are neuter ("das Auge") :D

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#117

Post by glogla »

TylerE wrote: post #58
ilammy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see the same thing in Russian and other slavic languages, for example, where you can use "-о" to convert an adjective into concept noun (of always neuter gender). For example, "добрый" (masculine adjective "good)" => "добро" (neuter noun "the good").

What would those sound like phonetically for those of us that can't read cryllic?

In English something like DO-BREE and DO-BROH (the latter ending with "o" in "rocket")

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#118

Post by derriz »

qayxc wrote: post #114
derriz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Mark Twain was making fun - the essay isn't supposed to be taken seriously. His conclusion would also be wrong , since the grammatical gender has nothing to do with he biological gender - it's the gender assigned to all diminutive forms, regardless of grammatical gender. E.g. "der Vater" (the father) becomes "das Väterchen" just as well without loosing his proverbial balls in the process.

Well yes - it's clearly a joke? It seems so obvious to me that I didn't think it needed to be pointed out when I quoted it.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#119

Post by rwmj »

irrational wrote: post #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…

Japanese has this distinction of animate/inanimate although I don't think(?) it's connected in any way to Proto-Indo-European. Anyway in that language it's subtle and weird. Living humans and animals are animate and paperclips are inanimate. Dead bodies - inanimate - unless you're talking respectfully about a deceased relative. Dolls are inanimate sometimes, but I've also seen them use the animate version (haunted dolls?). Camels can, according to [1], be either depending on whether you look at them as an animal or a mode of transport.

[1] https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/59531

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#120

Post by naringas »

leephillips wrote: post #49
naringas wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

No, it is correct that there are no neuter nouns in Spanish. That’s all it says. And you are very incorrect about “lo”. You can’t read a page of Spanish without encountering it several times.

but the vast majority of those "lo" would be the male article not the neuter.
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