Question: Why Does the Neuter Nominative Plural Match the Singular Nominative Feminine?
From the forum:
"...If a language were logical there couldn't be *any* misunderstandings whatsoever. for instance, if -a is the female nominative singular, then logic dictates that 'templa' shouldn't be a neuter nominative plural, 'agricola' shouldn't be male etc."Why does the neuter nominative and accusative plural match the nominative feminine singular?
Robin
Answer: The answer is theoretical. In the Indo-European languages of Latin and Greek, there are masculine, feminine, and neuter genders for nouns, but not all languages, -- not even all I-E languages -- have three genders. It's possible that early I-E languages had only two genders -- a singular and a collective, an active and an inactive, a masculine and a neuter, etc. However the words were divided up, in some early form of Indo-European, there may have been collective (and singular) nouns for things like flocks of sheep or herds of cattle that were given an -a ending. While the collective was itself neither masculine/feminine nor neuter, the individual members of the collective were overwhelmingly breeding stock and female. Assuming the feminine gender started later, it makes some sense to think that that -a ending would be passed on to the individual female creatures who had together comprised the collective.
Thus, the individual female creature had an -a ending and so did the collective neuter entity.
Note that this says nothing about the -a ending on agricola. It should be remembered that gender in linguistics is not the same as sexual gender, but refers to categories like the ones listed above (singular/collective, active/inactive, etc.).
Thus, the individual female creature had an -a ending and so did the collective neuter entity.
Note that this says nothing about the -a ending on agricola. It should be remembered that gender in linguistics is not the same as sexual gender, but refers to categories like the ones listed above (singular/collective, active/inactive, etc.).
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