<!>The Historical Linguistics Thread (2014-10-04 18:39:56)
The Historical Linguistics Thread
Anthologica Universe Atlas / Forums / Terra Firma / The Historical Linguistics Thread / <!>The Historical Linguistics Thread (2014-10-04 18:39:56)

? dhok posts: 235
, Alkali Metal, Norman, United States
message
quoting Rhetorica, Duchess of Space:
...Because there's something inherently funny about obnoxious smugness—if you're trying to ruin the community, anyway. Bad Ness!

A quick bit of Wikipedia-ing says that neuter came from an inanimate class, and both masculine and feminine came from an animate class (and another source says that feminine came from a mixing of the two. Said other source may help you figure it out.)

To expand upon this: the prevailing theory is that feminines come from collective neuters, at least morphologically. (The main piece of evidence for this is that both singular feminines and plural neuters ended in *-eh₂ [-ā in the "classical" reconstruction]). However, the languages that have a masculine/feminine/neuter division (essentially everyone but Hittite) treat the neuter differently from the masculine or feminine-for example, the nominative and the accusative are always the same in neuters in just about all IE languages (I can't think of an exception), and in Greek, plural neuters (ie "collectives") took singular verbs (I think Vedic Sanskrit did this too from time to time?)