From: connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: two questions
Date: 16 Oct 92 16:04:33 -0600
Organization: Memphis State University

In article <1992Oct16.184332.10315@spss.com>, markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
> In article <1992Oct16.103001.3713@memstvx1.memst.edu> connolly@memstvx1.memst.edu 
> (Leo Connolly) writes:
>>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:
> [for which see the original posting]
> 
> Thanks for the clarification.  But now I'd like to know how widespread 
> is this phenomenon of concord/NP class divergence.  In Russian,
> for instance, genders correlate pretty nicely with declension class,
> with a small number of exceptions (e.g. dyadya 'uncle') for which you 
> could say that the sex of the referent overrides the grammatical gender
> for concord purposes.  What happens in Greek?  proto-Germanic?  Sanskrit?

The picture is fairly complex.  Situations exactly parallel to _nauta
bonus_ and _malus bona_ are much harder to come by.  But there's another
thing that is shared by all of these, and by Latin as well.  There were
many declensional patterns, but I cited only two in Latin.  These patterns
reflect in large part the phonetic shape of the stem to which inflectional
endings were applied.  Keepint the numbering of the Latin declensions,
we find (for Latin, IE, Sanskrit, Proto-Germanic, and perhaps Slavic,
though here I'm not at all sure; certainly in Lithuanian) the following:

	Declension		Stem		Genders

	First			a:		feminine, a few masculine
	Second			o		masculine, neuter; a
						few feminine in Greek
							and Latin
	Third			(consonants)	all three genders
				i		all three genders
	Fourth			u		masculine, neuter
	Fifth			e:		feminine

Actually, the fifth declension is a Latin specialty; the others are
definitely Indo-European.  The "third" is quite a mixture of stems,
but the endings look much alike.

Anyhow: in any declension, masculine and feminine will look identical
or almost identical, but will look different from any gender in any
other declensions.  Neuters generally look different from masculines
and feminines in the nominative singular and the nominative and accu-
sative plural, sometimes also in the accusative singular.  But in any
IE language where these classes are maintained, gender agreement is
always by gender as the term is traditionally understood, not by inflec-
tional class.  Adjectives also come in inflectional classes: beside
the first-second declension group (bonus/a/um), Latin has many 3rd-
declension adjectives (mostly i-stems with masculine and feminine
identical).  Some examples:

Masculine:	nauta (1) bonus (2) 'good sailor'
		nauta (1) mollis (3) 'soft sailor'
		servus (2) bonus (2) 'good servant'
		servus mollis
		pater (3) bonus (2) 'good father'
		pater (3) mollis
		portus (4) bonus 'good port'
		portus mollis
		dies (5) bonus 'good day'
		dies mollis

Feminine:	terra (1) bona (1) 'good land'
		terra mollis (3) 'soft land'
		pirus (2) bona 'good pear tree'
		pirus mollis
		mater (3) bona 'good mother'
		mater mollis
		quercus (4) bona 'good oak tree'
		quescus mollis
		res (5) bona 'good thing'
		res aestimabilis 'estimable thing'

Neuter		(No first declension neuters)
		malum (2) bonum (2) 'good apple' (again, ma:lum, not malum 'evil')
		malum molle (3) 'soft apple'
		iter (3) bonum 'good route'
		iter molle
		genu (4) bonum 'good knee'
		genu aestimabile 'estimable knee'
		(No fifth declension neuters)

The situation in Greek, Sanskrit, and older Germanic languages is entirely
comparable: words of different inflectional classes belong to the same
gender and took identical adjective agreement, while some words of the
same inflectional class belonged to different genders and took different
adjective agreements, even if the adjectives belonged to the same inflec-
tional class as the noun.  Apparently the situation in late Proto-Indo-
European was identical.

But: many think the original gender distinction was between animate and
inanimate.  At least, the feminine seems derived and secondary and
is identical to masculine for all five Latin declensions, though not
necessarily elsewhere.  Some have proposed that the animate:inanimate
distinction arose through reanalysis of an earlier stage of Indo-European
where casemarking was ergative.  But that's dubious and in any event too
mush to put in a post like thins.

 
> Also, how different are the paradigms in Indo-European?  Do the differences
> between the classes tend to diminish as you trace them back in time?

No more or less different than in Latin, hence no tendency to increase or
diminish once the feminine had been established.

--Leo Connolly