The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter • Hacker News Board

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#131

Post by bodhiandpysics1 » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 3:30 AM UTC

smnrchrds wrote: post #39

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…

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…

This is a new development in farsi. ha is from the middle person iha, which ultimately derives from the indo-iranian plus -s (same as in english). s->h is characteristic of indo iranian in general and iranian in particular. an in middle person (which comes from another indo-iranian plural an) means this particular thing in middle person. In farsi this converted into general vs. living.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#132

Post by ddalex » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #20

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. Funny story: I've always remembered my german teacher getting flaberghasted at our inability to gender a table (as english speakers). She was all: "Come on! what kind of qualities do you think a table has!" And us high-schooler english speakers wer…

Funny, in German a "table" is masculine (der tisch) but in Romanian (romance language) is feminine (o masa), in Spanish is feminine (la mesa), Italian is masculine (il tavolo) unless you talk about having a supper (la tavola).

What I'm trying to say is that logic has nothing to do with it.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#133

Post by dodobirdlord » Fri, Mar 26, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

tom_mellior wrote: post #122

dodobirdlord wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Classical period Latin was so punctuation-free that words weren't even separated by spaces.

Weren't center dots common as word separators instead of spaces? For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome#/media/File:201...

Romans initially used center dots in early Roman history, but transitioned to continuous script for several centuries following exposure to Greek writing that used continuous script, before eventually transitioning to separating words with empty space. Use of the center dot seems to have persisted on monuments after it ceased to be used in ordinary writing.

The lack of spacing also led to an interesting phenomenon where most (perhaps nearly all) Romans could not read silently, and had to process written text by reading it aloud to themselves. There are some recorded instances of figures from Greek and Roman antiquity reading silently, but it’s generally remarked on as being surprising to those around them, and attributed to individuals that are otherwise attested to have been exceptionally intelligent (Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Saint Ambrose).

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#134

Post by ddalex » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 11:25 AM UTC

msrenee wrote: post #73

falcor84 wrote: post #10

I 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...

Russian is not a romance language. It having a neutral gender is not relevant to this article. There's lots of languages that have a neutral gender, just not really any currently spoken romance languages.

As a speaker of Romanian, I can assure you that Romanian has the neutral gender and it's currently spoken by over 20m people.

The argument of the article that the adjectives or articles are either masculine or feminine doesn't hold water for me because the neuter nouns behave differently from either masculine or feminine ones.

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#135

Post by tom_mellior » Sat, Mar 27, 2021, 11:39 AM UTC

dodobirdlord wrote: post #133

tom_mellior wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't center dots common as word separators instead of spaces? For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon,_Rome#/media/File:201...

Romans initially used center dots in early Roman history, but transitioned to continuous script for several centuries following exposure to Greek writing that used continuous script, before eventually transitioning to separating words with empty space. Use of the center dot seems to have persisted on monuments after it ceased to be used in ordinary writing. The lack of spacing also led to an interesting phenomenon wh…

Fascinating, thanks!

Re: The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter

#136

Post by patcon » Mon, Mar 29, 2021, 2:48 AM UTC

tom_mellior wrote: post #107

patcon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found this passage really provocative as well! It got me wondering what sort of conceptualization and distinction these cultures and early humans had around gender when they didn't see gender as the original way to split themselves. It got me thinking about what sort of language a descendent of bonobos might develop, and even whether proto humans conceived of gender in a more fluid way during co-evolution of langua…

Why would they need to "split themselves"? What's good about creating divisions for divisions' sake? It's certainly not necessary for human languages to have gender distinctions.

There are often stabilities in dualities, and specifically in having two strategies. "Segment" themselves was perhaps a better term, but two segments is often what I'm personally interested in

Feel free to investigate stability theory and specifically duality in dynamical systems (living cells themselves are dynamical systems, and I would venture human society could also be described as one)

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Moshe-Farjoun/publicati...

http://home.eng.iastate.edu/~ugvaidya/papers/Vaidya_Allerton...