Quick question on development of Spanish gender
Quick question on development of Spanish gender
A friend has voiced some curiosity about the development of Spanish "noche" and "día" and how they fell into their respective genders. Could anybody point me in the right direction to find him an answer?
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
"dia" was originally in the Latin 5th declension as a masculine. Most 5d nouns, IIRC, went over to the -a declension in Spanish, and dia retained its masculine gender. A similar situation can be seen with "la mano" (the hand) which was originally a 4th declension feminine, "manus", which retained its feminine gender when it merged with the -o declension. As for noche, it was feminine in Latin (as nox/noctis) in the 3rd declension, and it looks like it was feminine all the way back to PIE. Compare the distant cognates "die Nacht" in German and νύχτα (nychta) in Greek, both of which are also still feminine.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
It's still masculine in Portuguese: o dia, bom dia.
Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
And in Spanish as well, which is probably why the question was asked in the first place... After all, there's nothing terribly curious about Spanish nouns ending in -a being feminine.Mornche Geddick wrote:It's still masculine in Portuguese: o dia, bom dia.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
If Wiktionary is to be trusted, pretty much all cognates of noche/night in languages with masculine/feminine/neuter noun classes have it as a feminine.Herra Ratatoskr wrote:As for noche, it was feminine in Latin (as nox/noctis) in the 3rd declension, and it looks like it was feminine all the way back to PIE. Compare the distant cognates "die Nacht" in German and νύχτα (nychta) in Greek, both of which are also still feminine.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix: ... 3k%CA%B7ts
It doesn't have an entry for the PIE root of día though, though the one for the Old Armenian cognate lists some cognates if others want to check them out...
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D5%BF%D5 ... d_Armenian
Can we really say that PIE had masculine/feminine/neuter(?) gender though? Other similarly basic concepts often have differing gender, notably the words for sun vs. the words for moon.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
Up until its late stages it had Common and Neuter. The Feminine was one of the latest features to develop in the PIE grouping.Serafín wrote:Can we really say that PIE had masculine/feminine/neuter(?) gender though? Other similarly basic concepts often have differing gender, notably the words for sun vs. the words for moon.
Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
It's generally (but not universally) held that Proto-Indo-Hittite did not have a feminine gender - that Anatolian lost the feminine is a minority view.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
There's like 2 people that call it Indo-Hittite anymore.Richard W wrote:It's generally (but not universally) held that Proto-Indo-Hittite did not have a feminine gender - that Anatolian lost the feminine is a minority view.
Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
As someone representing here those crowds and crowds that don't - what do you call *it* (that very *it*) then?Drydic Guy wrote:There's like 2 people that call it Indo-Hittite anymore.Richard W wrote:It's generally (but not universally) held that Proto-Indo-Hittite did not have a feminine gender - that Anatolian lost the feminine is a minority view.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
They may not have even been in the language at the time, since theyre all Greek loanwords, but Wikipedia seems to indicate that Greek loans in Latin that end in -a generally are 1st declension.
(edit: mapa is from the Hebrew for napkin, so I dont know about that one)
(edit: mapa is from the Hebrew for napkin, so I dont know about that one)
Sunàqʷa the Sea Lamprey says:
Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
Those in -ma are 3rd declension and *neuter* in Latin (and Greek); neuter masculine in the standard in all the Romance languages, AFAIK.Soap wrote:They may not have even been in the language at the time, since theyre all Greek loanwords, but Wikipedia seems to indicate that Greek loans in Latin that end in -a generally are 1st declension.
(edit: mapa is from the Hebrew for napkin, so I dont know about that one)
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
Grama doesn't belong to the same group as tema/idioma/gorila/clima/etc. though. It is indeed from a 3rd declension neuter, gramen, but it's one of those neuter plurals reinterpreted as feminine (illa gramina > la grama), not one of those Greek borrowings which later became masculine.
Last edited by Ser on Wed May 11, 2011 10:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
Interesting. Is el cisma a Greek loan as well?Serafín wrote:Grama doesn't belong to the same group as tema/idioma/gorila/clima/etc. though. It is indeed from a 3rd declension neuter, gramen, but it's one of those neuter plurals reinterpreted as feminine (illa gramina > la grama), not one of those neuter Greek borrowings which later became masculine.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
Try checking the DRAE.
http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsult ... LEMA=cisma
And if you have access to Coromines's etymological dictionary, then go for it.
http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsult ... LEMA=cisma
And if you have access to Coromines's etymological dictionary, then go for it.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
My investigations show that clima was a third declension noun with the stem climat-. I wouldn't be surprised if other words like that were in use in Roman times.
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
Uhh, Proto-Indo-European?Basilius wrote:As someone representing here those crowds and crowds that don't - what do you call *it* (that very *it*) then?Drydic Guy wrote:There's like 2 people that call it Indo-Hittite anymore.Richard W wrote:It's generally (but not universally) held that Proto-Indo-Hittite did not have a feminine gender - that Anatolian lost the feminine is a minority view.
Unless you want it call it Old Pseudo-Urartian or Pseudo-Cimmerian for little reason...
Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
The potentially negligeable difficulty I see with your proposal is that a few oldschool guys are suited to the idea that "Indo-European" is a protolanguage for which there is some sort of reconstruction already available. Not a particularly stable or complete one, but certainly useful.Drydic Guy wrote:Uhh, Proto-Indo-European?Basilius wrote:As someone representing here those crowds and crowds that don't - what do you call *it* (that very *it*) then?Drydic Guy wrote:There's like 2 people that call it Indo-Hittite anymore.Richard W wrote:It's generally (but not universally) held that Proto-Indo-Hittite did not have a feminine gender - that Anatolian lost the feminine is a minority view.
But this customary picture portraits a situation where Anatolian is not part of Indo-European.
That is, for the entity that two people (Richard W. and I, obviously) still call Indo-Hittite we don't have a working reconstruction yet. Not even a sketchy one. For example, there are plenty of observations on sound correspondences which are probably valid, but (AFAIK) no accepted chart thereof pretending to be reasonably complete; people are still debating very basic things like which "laryngeal" in Proto-Indo-European corresponds to which "laryngeal" in Hittite (a necessary reservation is that I'm speaking of those few who are aware of there being at least two different "laryngeals" contrasting at least intervocalically in Hittite).
So, renaming Indo-Hittite to Indo-European implies that we don't have a reasonably detailed PIE reconstruction anymore, which some other people (besides the two who've been successfully identified above) may find embarrassing.
I hereby approve sharing this old news with those multitudes of advanced people who taught you that "Indo-Hittite" wasn't a useful term anymore :)
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
Here's the problem. You are assuming that Anatolian broke off some time before the other IE groups, which then shared some common development. But that isn't necessarily the case; it's been shown that there are parallels between Anatolian and Greek-Armenian-Albanian and Indo-Iranian, as opposed to Germanic/Baltic/Slavic/Italo-Celtic. Your 'old news' is also too old; it was shown in 1938 that Anatolian is a co-equal branch to the others. This means the 'useful reconstruction' needs to be adjusted, and that 'useful reconstruction' isn't valid anymore by itself, since the Anatolian evidence needs to be taken into account, not that an Indo-Hittite needs to be reconstructed separately.Basilius wrote:The potentially negligeable difficulty I see with your proposal is that a few oldschool guys are suited to the idea that "Indo-European" is a protolanguage for which there is some sort of reconstruction already available. Not a particularly stable or complete one, but certainly useful.
But this customary picture portraits a situation where Anatolian is not part of Indo-European.
That is, for the entity that two people (Richard W. and I, obviously) still call Indo-Hittite we don't have a working reconstruction yet. Not even a sketchy one. For example, there are plenty of observations on sound correspondences which are probably valid, but (AFAIK) no accepted chart thereof pretending to be reasonably complete; people are still debating very basic things like which "laryngeal" in Proto-Indo-European corresponds to which "laryngeal" in Hittite (a necessary reservation is that I'm speaking of those few who are aware of there being at least two different "laryngeals" contrasting at least intervocalically in Hittite).
So, renaming Into-Hittite to Indo-European implies that we don't have a reasonably detailed PIE reconstruction anymore, which some other people (besides the two who've been successfully identified above) may find embarrassing.
I hereby approve sharing this old news with those multitudes of advanced people who taught you that "Indo-Hittite" wasn't a useful term anymore
And as to the laryngeals, do remember that one theory holds that they merged and re-split in (at least) Hittite. I'd provide more info but my book on the Anatolian languages has vanished mysteriously D:
Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
OK, let's swap aroundDrydic Guy wrote:Your 'old news' is also too old; it was shown in 1938 that Anatolian is a co-equal branch to the others. This means the 'useful reconstruction' needs to be adjusted, and that 'useful reconstruction' isn't valid anymore by itself, since the Anatolian evidence needs to be taken into account, not that an Indo-Hittite needs to be reconstructed separately.
Now I claim that what you stated above is a minority view today (and deservedly, IMO). The idea of Anatolian being co-equal just sounds nonsensical.
Also, if branches A, B and C allow for a rather detailed and coherent reconstruction which is already there, and the hypothesis that a branch D is co-equal to them necessitates an "adjustment" in the reconstruction that hasn't been demonstrated to be feasible yet (I mean, since 1938), I think it's the new hypothesis that is suspect, not the former reconstruction.
Either you are referring to one of those theories that are based on, like, 2.5 examples, or you are saying something completely new to me, and then I'm really interested to hear the details (environments, examples etc.). Maybe in a separate thread, not to hijack this one.And as to the laryngeals, do remember that one theory holds that they merged and re-split in (at least) Hittite. I'd provide more info but my book on the Anatolian languages has vanished mysteriously D:
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
At this point I think it better to agree to disagree unless we can start citing actual things and not just shout YOU'RE WRONG. 'Cause everything I've read (published since 1990) says it's coequal. I would ask tho why it sounds nonsensical? Mycenaean Greek, Old Persian, and Vedic Sanskrit aren't that far off from the Anatolian timeframe.Basilius wrote:OK, let's swap aroundDrydic Guy wrote:Your 'old news' is also too old; it was shown in 1938 that Anatolian is a co-equal branch to the others. This means the 'useful reconstruction' needs to be adjusted, and that 'useful reconstruction' isn't valid anymore by itself, since the Anatolian evidence needs to be taken into account, not that an Indo-Hittite needs to be reconstructed separately.
Now I claim that what you stated above is a minority view today (and deservedly, IMO). The idea of Anatolian being co-equal just sounds nonsensical.
Also, if branches A, B and C allow for a rather detailed and coherent reconstruction which is already there, and the hypothesis that a branch D is co-equal to them necessitates an "adjustment" in the reconstruction that hasn't been demonstrated to be feasible yet (I mean, since 1938), I think it's the new hypothesis that is suspect, not the former reconstruction.
As soon as I find the damn book I'll throw up what I can. Maybe it's that, maybe it's something else.Either you are referring to one of those theories that are based on, like, 2.5 examples, or you are saying something completely new to me, and then I'm really interested to hear the details (environments, examples etc.). Maybe in a separate thread, not to hijack this one.And as to the laryngeals, do remember that one theory holds that they merged and re-split in (at least) Hittite. I'd provide more info but my book on the Anatolian languages has vanished mysteriously D:
At any rate, Wikipedia, while it mentions Indo-Hittite, in the end goes against your claim, and its cite for that (note 28) is 2007. Unfortunately the pdf it references is a dead link. I don't suppose anyone has it squirreled away?
Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
Timeframe? I don't follow, sorry.Drydic Guy wrote:At this point I think it better to agree to disagree unless we can start citing actual things and not just shout YOU'RE WRONG. 'Cause everything I've read (published since 1990) says it's coequal. I would ask tho why it sounds nonsensical? Mycenaean Greek, Old Persian, and Vedic Sanskrit aren't that far off from the Anatolian timeframe.Basilius wrote:OK, let's swap around :)Drydic Guy wrote:Your 'old news' is also too old; it was shown in 1938 that Anatolian is a co-equal branch to the others. This means the 'useful reconstruction' needs to be adjusted, and that 'useful reconstruction' isn't valid anymore by itself, since the Anatolian evidence needs to be taken into account, not that an Indo-Hittite needs to be reconstructed separately.
Now I claim that what you stated above is a minority view today (and deservedly, IMO). The idea of Anatolian being co-equal just sounds nonsensical.
Also, if branches A, B and C allow for a rather detailed and coherent reconstruction which is already there, and the hypothesis that a branch D is co-equal to them necessitates an "adjustment" in the reconstruction that hasn't been demonstrated to be feasible yet (I mean, since 1938), I think it's the new hypothesis that is suspect, not the former reconstruction.
Sorry, but I couldn't resist quoting some bits....At any rate, Wikipedia, while it mentions Indo-Hittite, in the end goes against your claim, and its cite for that (note 28) is 2007. Unfortunately the pdf it references is a dead link. I don't suppose anyone has it squirreled away?
Sure. I guess it's much more convenient to ignore Anatolian evidence while discussing the position of Anatolian... in general...Wikipedia wrote:Points proffered in favour of the Indo-Hittite hypothesis are the (non-universal) Indo-European agricultural terminology in Anatolia[25] and the preservation of laryngeals.[26] However, in general this hypothesis is considered to attribute too much weight to the Anatolian evidence.
Do you know what? this is absolutely perfect in its beauty! Early separation rather than a special ancestral relationship - I can't write like this! And immediately - the general scholarly opinion, which is corroborated by some powerful Holm (he's powerful, he alone is stronger than an army!). And another view seemlessly becoming the general scholarly opinion - did you notice? That's admirable!Wikipedia wrote: According to another view the Anatolian subgroup left the Indo-European parent language comparatively late, approximately at the same time as Indo-Iranian and later than the Greek or Armenian divisions. A third view, especially prevalent in the so-called French school of Indo-European studies, holds that extant similarities in non-satem languages in general - including Anatolian - might be due to their peripheral location in the Indo-European language area and early separation, rather than indicating a special ancestral relationship.[27] Holm (2008)[28] based on lexical calculations arrives at a picture roughly replicating the general scholarly opinion and refuting the Indo-Hittite hypothesis.
Now, Holm....
Stupid linguists they didn't use maximum likelihood estimator of the hypergeometric distribution!!!!Holm wrote: - Solving distribution problems in corpora of natural languages -> improved IE "Family Tree" -
[Abstract: Linguists use to assume that languages were closer related, the more features,
in particular common innovations, they share. In Holm (2003) has been demonstrated that
this assumption is erroneous because these researchers miss the fact that the amount of
shared agreements depends stochastically upon three more parameters. Only by help of the
maximum likelihood estimator of the hypergeometric distribution we are able to find the
amount of features, which must have been present in both languages at the era of their
separation. This way we obtain a chain of separation between a family of languages for
which the appropriate data is available. When applied to data of the Pokorny IEW, the
resulting late separation of Hittite, Albanian and Armenian could well have been caused
by their central position and therefore did not appear suspicious. Only when in a further
application to Mixe-Zoquean data the same observation occurred that poorly documented
languages appeared to separate late, a systematic bias could be suspected.
This work reveals the reason for this bias peculiar to lists of natural languages, as
opposed to stochastically normal distributed test cases like those presented in Holm 2007a.
As more modern and linguistic reliable database the new "Lexikon der indogermanischen Verben",
2nd.ed. (Rix et al. 2001) was the best choice. Indeed the suspicion was confirmed and it is
shown how these biased data can be correctly projected to true separation amounts.
The result is a partly new chain of separation for the main Indo-European branches, which
fits well to the grammatical facts, as well as to the geographical distribution of these branches.
In particular it clearly demonstrates that the Anatolian languages did not part as first
ones and thereby refutes the Indo-Hittite hypothesis.]
One must be in love with this guy to quote from him, I don't say believe - and I am.... Drydic Guy, thank you! I haven't read stuff like this for ages!
Basilius
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
Let us know when you hit puberty.
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But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!
But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!
Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
I admit that maybe I was carried away.Salmoneus wrote:Let us know when you hit puberty.
Do you mean that this thread would look better without the lengthy quotes above? I'll delete them if you suggest so.
Basilius
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Re: Quick question on development of Spanish gender
No, I think things are better standing where they stand; that way we avoid confusion.
And sorry for my cheap jibe, by the way. Just got a bit annoyed.
And sorry for my cheap jibe, by the way. Just got a bit annoyed.
Blog: [url]http://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/[/url]
But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!
But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!