From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: two questions
Date: 16 Oct 92 04:30:01 GMT
Article-I.D.: memstvx1.1992Oct16.103001.3713
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Oct15.185316.7681@spss.com>, markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
> In article <Bw46vp.EsB.2@cs.cmu.edu> adc+@cs.cmu.edu (Alan Christiansen) writes:
>>1.  Why do some languages (e.g., French, German) assign gender to the names 
>>    for inanimate objects, while other languages (e.g., English, Esperanto)
>>    do not?  Being a native English speaker, I have difficulty understanding
>>    the value of arbitrary gender assignment, and I have not been successful
>>    in finding anyone who can give me a plausible answer as to why this 
>>    practice evolved in some languages.  Anyone willing to try?
> 
> [stuff omitted]

> The "genders" are really declensional patterns: that is, words belonging
> to different patterns decline in different ways.  All the Indo-European
> languages go back to a three-gender system in proto-Indo-European.  This 
> isn't the only way of doing things; the Australian language Dyirbal has
> four genders; many of the Bantu languages have nine or so.
> 
I think you're missing something important about this.  Indo-European
languages have many declensional patterns but only three genders.  The
essential feature of IE gender is that nouns are cross-referenced by
gender, *not* declensional patterns.  Latin has great examples here:

	(1)	terra bona 'good land'
	(2)	servus bonus 'good slave'
	(3)	nauta bonus 'good sailor'
	(4)	malus bona 'good apple tree' (it's ma:lus and has nothing
		to do with malus 'evil')

(1) has a feminine noun _terra_, (2) has masculine _servus_.  _Terra_
belongs to the first declension, which is overwhelmingly feminine,
while _servus_ belongs to the masculine subdivision of the second de-
clension.  _Bonus/a/um_ is one of the many adjectives that use first-
declension endings for feminine concord, but second-declension endings
for masculine and neuter concord.  So (1) and (2) are "typical" sentences,
since the nouns belong to declensional classes that are typical for their
gender.  But some nouns are exceptional.  _Nauta_ is one of a small class
of first-declension masculine nouns, while Latin tree names are regularly
feminine regardless of declensional pattern.  (3) and (4) show that gender
operates independent of declensional class: a first-declension masculine
noun has second-declension masculine agreement, not first-declension
agreement.  Etc. etc.

What little I know of Swahili shows a much closer agreement between
concord and NP class.  I don't know whether the subject or object class
marker on the verb could differ from the class marker on the noun, but
I suspect it can't.  This is probably why the classes of Bantu languages
are not usually called genders, though I quite agree with you that the
term is appropriate, and I use it in my teaching.

>>2.  Why is it that English marks the third person singular of verbs (with -s),
>>    while all other forms are not distinguished?  (I love, You love, He/she/it
>>    loves, we love, you (all) love, they love)
>>    What is special about third person singular that makes it worthy of 
>>    marking?
> 
> Nothing at all.  Again, English used to have endings for all six person/
> number combinations, and regular sound changes caused all but the 3.sg.
> forms to merge together.  (To be precise, the 2.sg. forms stayed distinct--
> "thou lovest"-- but we stopped using that pronoun instead.)

Already in Old English the three plural forms shared the same ending:
typically _-ath_ for the present tense, _-on_ for the past.  While _-on_
may well have been lost through a general (but somewhat irregular)
pattern of phonetic decay of unstressed syllables, that won't wash for
_-ath_: the same consonant survived in the third person singular form,
which was typically _-th_ (I know that my Redeemer liveth, etc.)!
No explanation beyond general sloppiness seems available!

Where did -s come from?  Supposedly it's a Viking import, since in Scandi-
navian 2.sg. *-z (> -r) spread first to the 3.sg, then to all present tense
forms.  The r-form was not imported into English, of course, and would
have to be a somewhat later development in Scandinavian, though it's already
present in Old Norse of 1200 or so.

English is peculiar in one respect.  In a whole slew of languages it is
the 3.sg. that has no ending; other forms do.  (I got into hot water on
this point just last week re. Spanish).  So the question remains: why
does the 3.sg. (of all forms) have an ending in English?  There is no
good reason, and it goes against the trend of so many other languages
*not* to put an ending on that form.

--Leo Connolly