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The Original Nominal System of Proto-Indoeuropean - Case and Gender
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As shown above - see the pages referring to early Proto-Indoeuropean
syntactic
structure and verbal endings - I assume that
the later Indoeuropean nominative is a recent case which did not exist
when Proto-Indoeuropean was an ergative type language. Regardless of noun
constructions where the genetive was probably already used I assume at
least three cases as fundamental for the syntactic structure of early Proto-Indoeuropean.
These cases are the locative ending in -i which I suppose to be used as
ergative case, the dative in -ei/-oi which I suppose to be used as agent
case in a reflexive sense and the later accusative which I suppose to be
used as absolute case.
I assume that Proto-Indoeuropean was a two gender language originally
distinguishing animate and inanimate nouns. This hypothesis is not new
and is based on the fact that Hittite (and its relatives) which is documented
by written sources as early as the first half of the second millennium
BC does not distinguish between male and female but only between animate
and inanimate gender, i.e. it lacks the female gender marking a-declension.
Nevertheless, some scientists maintain that Hittite may have lost a former
a-declension and therefore also the female gender. I can hardly believe
this loss, but even if it happened one must realize the weak position of
the Indoeuropean female gender. There are no different endings in comparision
with the "male" gender, but the nominative singular of the a-declension
which lacks the -s-ending. This ending agrees with the ending of the inanimate
gender's nominative plural ending and seems to be of the same origin. From
this point a new paradigm of female marked lexems has arisen - originally
just a matter of word-formation and not a real gender. The female gender
was born by introducing a special female gender concordance system based
on the a-declension. It is worth noticing that the separation of the new
gender has not changed the old animate gender itself. So I think it is
incorrect that Indoeuropean languages possess the three genders male -
female - neuter. The real gender system is animate versus inanimate with
the special case of female gender within the animate gender. There is no
marker for a male gender and I think that there is no real male gender
within the Indoeuropean languages. Therefore it becomes clear that this
class of simply animate nouns represents the normal case. This preference
has nothing to do with patriarchal mind (as maintained by feminist linguists)
- it is just a matter of general versus special.
From the point of view that Proto-Indoeuropean lacked the nominative
originally and that the current accusative was used as absolute case at
that time, it is not surprising that this case is the only one distinguishing
the original genders animate versus inanimate by the markers -m and -d.
See the page referring to a special phonetic law
for the reasons why I am assuming the inanimate ending -d of the absolute
(later accusative) case not only for pronouns but also for nouns. I am
further assuming that the endings -m/-d are not case endings at all but
the original gender markers - the absolute case bore no special case ending
at nouns. See the page referring to relations between
Indoeuropean and Afroasiatic languages for possible connections of
the gender markers -m/-d! Regarding personal pronouns which do not distinguish
gender in Indoeuropean languages one must be interested in their accusative
(absolute case) ending. I think that the ending in this special case is
-e due to Greek enclitic personal pronouns me < m+-e ("me"), se <
t(u)+-e ("you") and he < s(u)+-e ("himself"). This ending corresponds
with the endings of the intransitive verb which are the nowaday perfect
endings as shown in the pages about verbal endings
and
syntactic structure.
Last but not least it is interesting how the nominative case came
into being. The form for the inanimate gender is not different from the
accusative at all. The nominative of the animate gender generally ends
in -s (provided that nominatives with long ending vowel like Greek patér
show -s-compensating lengthening). I think that the later article *so /
*seh2 / *tod (animate / female / inanimate) has simply been suffixed to
the endingless noun stem. As the verb already corresponded to the agent
of the sentence, it is not surprising that this primitive innovation was
well-suited to win the run for the agent representation. This was the begin
of the Indoeuropean nominative era leading to the commonly reconstructed
Proto-Indoeuropean stage.
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Written by Hans-Joachim Alscher
e-mail: hans.alscher@noel.gv.at
