2 ms·

Yes, the expressions “moving” – “not-moving” are rather misleading. The actual distinction according to this theory (or to my favourite flavour of this theory)

by Mlller 6y ago

Yes, the expressions “moving” – “not-moving” are rather misleading. The actual distinction according to this theory (or to my favourite flavour of this theory) was: “able to act willfully” – “unable to act willfully”. The distinction was quite logical. Cp.: (A) “Susan runs down the hill.” (B) “Water runs down the hill.” (C) “Susan drinks water.” A speaker of Proto-Indo-European might have said, learning English: “This is strange – as if these were somehow the same acts or events. ‘Susan runs’, OK, but water does not run – it is dragged down. It does not act, something happens to it.” (And then the PIE-speaker might have speculated that anglophone people have an animistic worldview or so.) In PIE the subject of a sentence seems to have denoted an actual agens; and there seems to have been a class of nouns for things unable to act willfully, hence unable to be the subject. So that the subject in (A) and (C) would have been a subject in the nominative, denoting an agens, whereas in (B) “water” would not have been seen as subject; the sentence would have been constructed differently and “water” would have been put in the same case as “water” in (C). Because all over the old IE languages, neuter nouns have the same form for the nominative and the accusative, and it seems to have been rather the form for the accusative: Cp. Latin masc. nom. sg. ‑us Latin masc. acc. sg. ‑um Latin neutr. nom. sg. ‑um Latin neutr. acc. sg. ‑um There is further evidence, too. In principle, the distinction was quite logical, but its application is difficult and gets easily messed up over time until the old semantic distinction has become a mere formal one.

umanwizard 6y ago
> all over the old IE languages, neuter nouns have the same form for the nominative and the accusative The lack of distinction between neuter nominative and neuter accusative is not just true of nouns in old IE languages. It's true of all grammatical categories in virtually all modern IE languages too (with some very obscure exceptions). Consider German articles der/den vs. das/das. Or English pronouns she/her vs. it/it. More info: https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/18/accusative-equals-nominative-for-neuter-words-how-universal-is-this-and-why https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/18/accusative-equa... https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/9105/why-do-neuter-nominative-and-accusative-always-agree-in-ie-languages https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/9105/why-do-... Apparently one of the obscure exceptions is the Russian word оно - but they are indeed quite rare.
- Mlller 6y ago
  Correct: According to the theory outlined above, no neutral form could have been a PIE nominative, because the PIE nominative would have been marked willfully acting entities. So the root cause would have been the distinction made for nouns (“can willfully act” – “cannot willfully act”), and this must affect all words with noun-agreement (i.e. adj., det.) or words substituting, deputizing nouns (i.e. pronouns). It is wonderful that this formerly semantic system (if the theory is correct) has left its formal trace over millennia and a range of thousands of miles. Such preservation was likely in so far as otherwise a new suffix-inflectional distinction had to be introduced in order to distinguish the nominative neuter from the accusative neuter; and in the history of the IE languages, suffix-inflectional distinctions are rather removed than built.

by Mlller 6y ago

umanwizard 6y ago

> all over the old IE languages, neuter nouns have the same form for the nominative and the accusative The lack of distinction between neuter nominative and neuter accusative is not just true of nouns in old IE languages. It's true of all grammatical categories in virtually all modern IE languages too (with some very obscure exceptions). Consider German articles der/den vs. das/das. Or English pronouns she/her vs. it/it. More info: https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/18/accusative-equals-nominative-for-neuter-words-how-universal-is-this-and-why https://latin.stackexchange.com/questions/18/accusative-equa... https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/9105/why-do-neuter-nominative-and-accusative-always-agree-in-ie-languages https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/9105/why-do-... Apparently one of the obscure exceptions is the Russian word оно - but they are indeed quite rare.

Mlller 6y ago
Correct: According to the theory outlined above, no neutral form could have been a PIE nominative, because the PIE nominative would have been marked willfully acting entities. So the root cause would have been the distinction made for nouns (“can willfully act” – “cannot willfully act”), and this must affect all words with noun-agreement (i.e. adj., det.) or words substituting, deputizing nouns (i.e. pronouns). It is wonderful that this formerly semantic system (if the theory is correct) has left its formal trace over millennia and a range of thousands of miles. Such preservation was likely in so far as otherwise a new suffix-inflectional distinction had to be introduced in order to distinguish the nominative neuter from the accusative neuter; and in the history of the IE languages, suffix-inflectional distinctions are rather removed than built.