5 ms·

Because the article is about Latin?

by jgwil2 6y ago

falcor84 6y ago
Touché :) I know Russian isn't a Romance language, but it is Indo-European in origin, and I was wondering if maybe there was some parallel process that ended differently there. But I suppose you're right, it's reasonably outside the scope of this article.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > I know Russian isn't a Romance language, but it is Indo-European in origin, and I was wondering if maybe there was some parallel process that ended differently there. The phenomenon this article talks about seems specific to Latin: > To trace the decline of the neuter, we can begin with a theoretical principle: the process must have begun early, at a time when Latin was still a unified language. If we do not accept this as a first premise, it becomes very difficult to explain why the neuter is absent from the whole Romance family – why its decline was so uniform. This is not to say that the neuter had died completely when Romance languages first emerged, only that the seeds had already been sown and the die already cast. Though I suppose your observation that Russian (and I think other Indo-European languages) still have the neuter gender kinda confirms that.
- dhosek 6y ago
  Czech has essentially four grammatical genders: In addition to the masculine, feminine and neuter, there is also masculine inanimate which shares some characteristics with the neuter such as having identical forms for the nominative and accusative cases. But Slavic languages are very much a different part of the Indo-European family with most of them having bucked the trend of dropping declension of nouns and adjectives (Bulgarian has largely lost its declensions).
  - umanwizard 6y ago
    Icelandic also retains a complex system of noun declensions.
  - gregopet 6y ago
    Slovenian & a couple of other Slavic languages even still have the dual besides plural and singular :)
    - dhosek 6y ago
      Czech takes it a bit further and changes declensions for plurals greater than 4 (it actually just drops some cases and uses the genitive plural form instead—I forget the details). I suspect this is an odd variant of the dual rule from some proto-Slavic language.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  In addition to Russian, there are many other Indo-European languages that retain the neuter. E.g.: Icelandic, German, modern Greek. And some others besides Latin have lost it: Old Persian had it but modern Persian doesn't; same for Sanskrit vs. modern Hindi.

Because the article is about Latin?

by jgwil2 6y ago

Because the article is about Latin?

Touché :) I know Russian isn't a Romance language, but it is Indo-European in origin, and I was wondering if maybe there was some parallel process that ended differently there. But I suppose you're right, it's reasonably outside the scope of this article.

tablespoon 6y ago
> I know Russian isn't a Romance language, but it is Indo-European in origin, and I was wondering if maybe there was some parallel process that ended differently there. The phenomenon this article talks about seems specific to Latin: > To trace the decline of the neuter, we can begin with a theoretical principle: the process must have begun early, at a time when Latin was still a unified language. If we do not accept this as a first premise, it becomes very difficult to explain why the neuter is absent from the whole Romance family – why its decline was so uniform. This is not to say that the neuter had died completely when Romance languages first emerged, only that the seeds had already been sown and the die already cast. Though I suppose your observation that Russian (and I think other Indo-European languages) still have the neuter gender kinda confirms that.
dhosek 6y ago
Czech has essentially four grammatical genders: In addition to the masculine, feminine and neuter, there is also masculine inanimate which shares some characteristics with the neuter such as having identical forms for the nominative and accusative cases. But Slavic languages are very much a different part of the Indo-European family with most of them having bucked the trend of dropping declension of nouns and adjectives (Bulgarian has largely lost its declensions).
- umanwizard 6y ago
  Icelandic also retains a complex system of noun declensions.
- gregopet 6y ago
  Slovenian & a couple of other Slavic languages even still have the dual besides plural and singular :)
  - dhosek 6y ago
    Czech takes it a bit further and changes declensions for plurals greater than 4 (it actually just drops some cases and uses the genitive plural form instead—I forget the details). I suspect this is an odd variant of the dual rule from some proto-Slavic language.
umanwizard 6y ago
In addition to Russian, there are many other Indo-European languages that retain the neuter. E.g.: Icelandic, German, modern Greek. And some others besides Latin have lost it: Old Persian had it but modern Persian doesn't; same for Sanskrit vs. modern Hindi.