The Feminine Gender in Indo-European - Exploring Anatolian Echoes and the Curious *-h2 suffix

We are going head first into the Proto-Indo-European feminine gender, exploring its origins and some very controversial traces in the Anatolian languages! 📜🗺️ (I can't wait to read people's opinions on this 😉)

From the early days of PIE with a two-gender system to the development of the feminine marked by the *-h2 suffix, linguists have uncovered a fascinating evolution – but that discovery was an extremely arduous one.

Discover the consensus at the beginning and end of this linguistic tale, where most agree on a three-gender system. 🤔 However, the middle part remains a debated terrain. Croatian linguist Ranko Matasoic suggests a split within the inanimate gender, resulting in the animate, inanimate/abstract, and inanimate concrete categories—masculine, feminine, and neuter but was he right?
Well, esteemed linguist Silvia Luraghi has something to say about that....

Anatolian languages add an intriguing twist to the narrative, as they don't overtly maintain a three-gender system. 🤷‍♂️ Explore three possible explanations: Did Anatolian lose the third gender, was it never part of the proto-Indo-European continuum, or did it break away during the formation of the feminine, leaving obscure traces?

Linguist Melchert's journey from attributing Anatolian with a feminine gender in 1992 to his later claims in 2014 adds an element of mystery. 🕵️‍♀️ What happened in Anatolian during the development of the feminine gender, and does evidence in Lycian provide some clues?
Join the discussion on the linguistic nuances of gender development, appreciate the scholarly debates, and explore the enigma of Anatolian in this captivating linguistic exploration! 🧐🗣️

#ProtoIndoEuropean #Linguistics #AnatolianLanguages #FeminineGender #LanguageEvolution #Hittite #indoeuropean #lycian
Selected references (In no particular order)

Kalinka E. & Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. (1901). Tituli asiae minoris. vol. 1 tituli lyciae lingua lycia conscripti. Alfredi Hoelderi.

Kim, R. I. (2014). "A Tale of Two Suffixes: *‑h2‑, *‑ih2‑, and the Evolution of Feminine Gender in Indo-European". In Studies on the Collective and Feminine in Indo-European from a Diachronic and Typological Perspective. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004264953...

🌟 Melchert, H. C. (2014). "PIE *‑eh2 as an “individualizing” Suffix and the Feminine Gender". In Studies on the Collective and Feminine in Indo-European from a Diachronic and Typological Perspective. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004264953...

'The Feminine Gender in Anatolian,' in Früh-, Mittel-, Spätindogermanisch. Akten der IX. Fachtagung der indogermanischen Gesellschaft (ed. George Dunkel et al.) (1994)

Luraghi, (2009b). Indo-European nominal classification: From abstract to feminine. In S. W. Jamison, H. C. Melchert, B. Vine, eds., Proceedings of the 20th Annual UCLA Indo-European Conference, Bremen, Hempen, 115-131

🌟Luraghi, S. (2011). The origin of the Proto-Indo-European gender system: Typological considerations. Folia Linguistica, 45(2), 435-463. https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.2011.016

Luraghi, (2009a). The origin of the feminine gender in PIE: An old problem in a new perspective. Grammatical Change in Indo-European Languages , pp 3-13

Tichy, E. (1993). Kollektiva, Genus femininum und relative Chronologie im Indogermanischen. Historische Sprachforschung / Historical Linguistics, 106(1), 1–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40849074

🌟Matasović, R. (2004). Gender in Indo-European.

🌟Kloekhorst, A. (2019). Kanišite Hittite: The earliest attested record of Indo-European. (Particularily chapters 3,5 and 8 but the whole book is a must read tbh)

Melchert, H. Craig. 1992. Relative Chronology and Anatolian: the Vowel System.In Robert Beekes et al. (eds.), Rekonstruktion und Relative Chronologie, 41–53 (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft Band 65). Innsbruck:Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck.

Meester, L. (2020). The origins of the PIE feminine gender: Reconsidering the evidence from Proto-Indo-Anatolian to Proto-Indo-European. (Master's thesis, Comparative Indo-European Linguistics, Leiden)

Sasseville, D. (2018). New Evidence for the PIE Common Gender Suffix eh2 in Anatolian: Luwian -ašša (c.) and Lycian B asa (c.). In 100 Jahre Entzifferung des Hethitischen Morphosyntaktische Kategorien in Sprachgeschichte und Forschung: Akten der Arbeitstagung der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft vom 21. bis 23. September 2015 in Marburg.

Music:
Vespers on the Shore - The Mini Vandals
Sao Meo - Doug Maxwell_ Zac Zinger