If you, dear reader, have ever woken up one day and found yourself distressed by the question of the existence of the feminine gender (in languages), then today you will have some answers, for in this most excellent entry there is a most excellent theory, entirely stolen from (one of) Iceland's greatest (contemporary) grammarian(s), whose name is Jón, and Axel, and also Harðarson. I have stolen his article, and disfigured it horribly with this translation.
1.
The original Indo-European had two genders, lat. genus commune and lat. genus neutrum. The differentiation between two biological genders, both contained in the common gender, masculine and feminine, was mostly lexical or based on context. The evidence of this state still exists in most modern I-E languages in the so-called r-stems, i.e. the words of family, such as father and mother. These words are declined the same way, despite clearly signifying on one hand something male, and on the other hand something female, and the reason for this that in the beginning they were both of the common gender.
This bisect system traces it's roots to an older yet system, in which the division of nouns was that between words that signify living things, lat. animata, and words that signify concepts or objects, lat. inanimata. The evidence of this division lies in on one hand the declensional difference between common (gender) and neutrum in nominative, and on the other hand the formal consistency of nominative and accusative of nouns.
To understand why this is evidence we must look at the prehistory of the syntactic relationship between subject, predicate and object in Indo-European. Here we may discern two possible positions for nouns: one is the actor or agent, i.e. performs the function of the transitive or intransitive dynamic verb; and the the other is unmarked and defined in two ways: on one hand the subject of the stative verb, on the other the goal of the action, i.e. the patient, of the transitive verb.
[Some of you might not know what this means. The function of verbs is either dynamic or stative, meaning that it contains either that something happens or that there is a state (without change) of things. An example of a dynamic verb: follow (transitive), run (intransitive); an example of a stative verb: lie. I am also not sure about the names of things. In the sentence the cat attacked the grammarian, the cat is the actor or agent, and the grammarian is the patient.]
In the marked position were nouns in a case which in Latin has been named casus ergativus or activus (depending on whether I-E was an active or ergative language, not that it matters for this point as it is valid in both cases). This case had the ending -s. The nouns of the unmarked position were in a case titled casus indefinitus, which had no ending. Now: while nouns which signified functioning living creatures could be in both marked and unmarked positions, the nouns which signified concepts or objects were tied to the unmarked position. This is why the words of neutrum (with the exception of the analogical ending -m of o-stems) stayed unmarked and do not discern between nominative and accusative. This is state still present in the I-E daughter languages.
[We will not concern ourselves with the development of the syntactic system of the language, unless someone feels wildly excited about it, in which case they can ask about the fate of these heroic cases, and how a new case took the place of accusative.]
2.
So, original Indo-European had two genders: common and neutrum. A little later the feminine gender came along, and though not everyone agrees on it's development there is a consensus on it's origin from neutrum. The suffixes used for forming feminine come from the system of neutrum words, where they (the suffixes) had the role of forming mass nouns (collectiva) or nouns of intangible meaning (abstracta). The suffixes of feminine are:
- *-ih2-/-i̯ah2- (older convention: -ī-/-i̯ā-)
- *-h2-/-ah2- (older convention: *-ā-)
- ved. rā́jan- 'king' : rā́jñī- 'queen', vŕ̥ka- 'wolf' : vŕ̥kī́- 'female wolf'
- lat. dominus 'master' : domina 'mistress', equus 'horse' : equa 'female horse'
Feminine words which are formed with the suffix *-ah2- have a different story. They probably originate in adjectives, more specifically in abstract nouns derived from adjectives. Of adjectives such as *dn̥srós 'wise' and *léubhos 'dear' are the words *dn̥sráh2 'wisdom' and *leubháh2 'charity' (same root as love). They could be used as compliments which referred to feminine words in the position of the subject. Example:
*réĝih2 leubháh2 (h1est) '[the] queen is charity'Since the sound in the final position of both word forms was the same (i.e. h2), the compliment could be redefined as the syntactic correspondence of the subject and thus the feminine form of the adjective. Later such forms became regular feminine forms of o-stem adjectives, cf. lat. longus 'langur', f. longa. Finally this feminine formation moved also into nouns, cf. lat. equus 'horse' and equa 'female horse.'
As we now know the feminine gender developed out of neutrum. That which caused these two genders to divide was that words which were formed with the aforementioned suffixes and signified female beings adapted greatly to the declension of words of common gender. They then picked up the ending -m in accusative singular and a plural declension, but neutrum words formed originally no plural, but instead there was used a special collective noun formation. (Later the collective nouns which functioned as plural also got plural endings, though not in nominative and accusative.) Following this development all words which had the same suffixes as the aforementioned feminine words picked up their declension, whatever their meaning, though with one exception: If the formation i nquestion was a collective noun which stood opposite a basic word in singular, it was not turned from neutrum into feminine.
And so, with this the grammatical feminine gender came into existence; the original bisect gender system of Indo-European had changed into a trisect system, where there are differentiations between masculine, feminine and neutrum. Most of the old Indo-European languages have preserved this system.
3.
I wonder whether those fighting feminists would have fought the use of the feminine gender if they had known. "Indo-European languages: oppressing women for over four thousand years!"
And also, for those of you interested in Old Norse/Icelandic, the professor mentioned above, whose name is Jón, and Axel, and Harðarson, is supposedly working on a book on Old Icelandic grammar, a book to be the rightful successor of Adolf Noreen's Altislandische und altnorwegische Grammatik.
Ite, missa est concio.
4 comments:
very interesting!
I agree! That is why I wrote about it. This gender business is fun stuff, and what not.
An interesting post - though I had to re-read it several times as I confess that, for all my love of languages, I've had to focus on the stuff of my actual chosen career (which, being medical, doesn't leave much room for linguistics - at least, not in modern medicine, which is thoroughly misguided as it is, but that's another matter... how easily I digress).
The theory aside (I'll put it through my pixie-in-crime, who has been a Latin language student before biomedicine stole HER away as well - ha), I found your comment re: feminism and women being oppressed by the laws Indo-European grammar most thought-provoking, ha ha. This may or may not be due to my deep and passionate aversion to the paradox that is feminism, but ah well. At any rate, it inspired rememberance of the following theory. So, a theory for a theory...
My first language, though I presently (and heartbreakingly) use it far less than I do English, having been a Londoner for 18/24 years of life, is Arabic. As I'm sure you know, Arabic employs the male and female genders, and has no neutrum. In fact, traditionally Arabic use of the male gender often incorporated the female gender, i.e. reference to the male usually meant both men AND women, unless otherwise stated. This is best observed in the jewel of Arabic language/literature, the Qur'an, which employs the male gender to refer to both genders throughout, and in which references specific to males are clarified via direct mention of men, and vice versa re: women. Therefore, whenever it (or other classical Arabic texts) mention the female gender, it is in emphasis - e.g. employment of the feminine gender in a sentence referring to people in general (and therefore which would normally simply use the masculine) is used to emphasise that BOTH men and women are subject to whatever the object of that sentence happens to be. Thus, whenever the feminine gender is specifically mentioned, it is taken to be a reminder to the reader of the importance of the message of that word to both sexes.
This is something that has often bothered the politically correct - such as those who are largely responsible for use of 'he/she' (and often a compensatory 'she/he', as though this will alter the state of women in the world, ha), or those trying to compile a 100% 'equal' politically correct language. I confess that in my darker days I would become irritated with such 'sexist' usage in the world. Since then (and very thankfully), I've come to understand language (and the world) in new and deeply comforting ways. Arabic is a language that is, just as is pretty much every other part of the associated culture/religion/mysticism/etc, an extension of nature. There is an entire science that exists that unearths the relationships between Arabic root words, physiology, the soul, etc... with respect to gender (and before I digress MUCH further), the theory goes like this:
DNA is now considered the (biological) 'language' of nature. Male DNA contains X and Y chromosomes; i.e. both female and male DNA, Y being designated masculine as it exists in males alone. Females, XX, contain only the X chromosome. Arabic simply mirrors this in its usage of genders. When it refers to all humankind, it uses the masculine; when it wishes to focus on females or draw attention to their specific inclusion in something. One of my favourite examples of the latter use is in the wording of the Prophetic religious instruction to Muslims that the search for knowledge is obligatory for all men AND women - a sentence in which it would have been grammatically correct and normally habitual to simply use 'men', but in which 'women' was deliberately included to quash any misinterpretations and dispel the concept of knowledge being the realm of men. (This particular piece was related in 600 -700 AD when knowledge, language and learning were accessed only by the elite and men, and when the masses were kept safely ignorant, and when female scholars were unheard of.)
So, consequently, I find the insistence upon female genders - or, rather, the insistence that feminine genders be used in ways equal and exact to masculine genders in every instance of speech and literature - altogether pretentious and unnatural. But then, I come from a school of thought which believes that women have everything that men have PLUS a little extra (the womb), and thus the feminine gender (as with many other things) need only really be employed when there is a need for differentiation or particular emphasis... which is not quite the modern mindset. ; )
My apologies - this is not so much a response to your post as a reaction to it, but ah well.
Dear Aleppine, out of all your comments so far, all which have been lovely, this is by far my favorite.
Originally I had intended this entry to be much longer, as I wanted to discuss the efforts of feminists to 'neutralize' the Icelandic language, most recently in a struggle over a new Bible translation. Eventually I decided to just trim it down to the translated part from JAH, and to comment shortly after.
I had heard about the Arabic gender system, as with other Semite languages, but more than that I do not know. I want to learn some Semite languages, in particular Akkadian and Sumerian, and in fact I dream of three years in Universität Wien's altsemitische Philologie/Sprache. Of little practical use however, but such are most dreams.
The main dispute that I can think of at the moment is with the the demonstrative pronoun, sá, same as in Old English and Gothic, though the English now use the personal pronoun he instead. In English one can say something like, hrm, he who eats alone also chokes alone. This use of the personal pronoun has been criticized recently, and as far as I know editors of the fancier and more modern sort are actively replacing he with they or one. On one hand it does not matter what agreements people have about their language and gender, on the other hand such 'modern' use renders the 'classical' use obsolete, and thus meaning is lost to the more modern generations. And that is bad, because it means that a lot of old writings become gradually inaccessible to mod. kids. What is more is that this use is traditional in most Indo-European languages, a remain from the times of old when the demonstrative pronoun was only of one (common) gender, and people were alike and equal. At least in grammatical terms, heh.
In any case, you are a rich commentator, dear Aleppine, and I hope to see you still around commenting when I restore this blog in the coming fall. Perhaps you might even consider joining my 'dream team' of co-authors and conspirators, writing more reactions of the sort. Hrm. Hrm? Hrm. Hrm.
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