All Questions
Tagged with gender historical-linguistics
9 questions
1
vote
0
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131
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Any old noun class system without chaotic formal/ semantic assignment
When noun class/gender system gets old, the semantic/formal assignment rules of the noun class become more opaque/unreliable because of loanwords and erosion of (derivational) suffixes and etc.
eg. in ...
- 374
10
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1
answer
6k
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How did the generic masculine emerge?
In an essay for school I recently claimed the generic masculine was caused by sexism, but my teacher complained that I hadn't given a reason for this. Assuming my hypothesis is correct, how did this ...
- 243
2
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0
answers
206
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Common origin of PIE feminine and collective plural and semantic implications
It is generally believed that the neuter nominative-accusative plural and feminine singular in PIE both originate in a common *-h2 suffix which originally marked collective, although recent works tend ...
0
votes
1
answer
129
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How to do Practice Problem for Basque
Link to Problem(both Problems and Answers[but no explanations])
https://sites.google.com/site/paninilinguisticsolympiad/Resources/sample-problems-and-solutions
My question is about the problem titled &...
2
votes
1
answer
376
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Western European languages tend to have fewer genders and simpler case systems than Eastern European ones, is this due to contact?
You can draw a relatively consistent line through Europe, to the west of which, Indo-European languages mostly have one or two genders and nouns don't inflect for case, and to the east of which, ...
- 129
23
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3
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7k
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Why do some Indo-European languages have genders and some don't?
In some languages, like German and French, every noun has a gender and each gender has its article. Whereas languages like English and Persian do not have genders. Why is that?
Even though these ...
- 341
15
votes
2
answers
825
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How stable are grammatical genders?
In languages which have gender-like classifications for nouns, like French and Russian, how often do nouns change gender over time? Have any studies been done to get statistics on how many words have ...
- 321
8
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2
answers
566
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Has grammatical gender ever been observed to emerge in a language that previously had none?
Does a language exist whose older forms are known to have lacked the category of grammatical gender, and which proceeded to evolve one (perhaps from a non-gender-based system of noun classes)? Are "...
- 997
21
votes
7
answers
8k
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What is the origin of non-natural grammatical genders in Indo-European languages?
Non-natural grammatical genders in Indo-European languages:
What is their origin (assuming that there is a single origin, if there are many origins)? Or what are the origins?
How and for what ...
- 8,571