(CW: transphobia) Early Proto-Indo-European moment

Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem] · 7 months ago

(CW: transphobia) Early Proto-Indo-European moment

NSFW

Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem] · 7 months ago

It is commonly believed that early Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had only two noun classes, animate and inanimate. PIE used demonstrative pronouns as third-person pronouns, which in practice means that early PIE did not distinguish between an equivalent to "he" or "she", but rather used the word *só for referents of all genders. Later stages of PIE would innovate a feminine gender, adding the feminine suffix *-h₂ to *só to create feminine *seh₂. This left the animate gender to become the masculine and the inanimate gender as the neuter.

According to some theories, the Anatolian languages split off from PIE before the development of the feminine had happened or finished, and this is why Anatolian languages such as Hittite have only an animate-inanimate distinction rather than a masculine-feminine distinction.

Collatz_problem [comrade/them] · edit-2 7 months ago

Slavic languages still keep the animate-inanimate distinction together with usual grammatic gender, even though this distinction is visible only in accusative case.

Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem] · 7 months ago

I'm pretty sure that the Slavic languages' animate-inanimate distinction was innovated, rather than inherited from PIE.