Do We Know How "Gender" Arises in Language?
Also, is Chomsky's "Universal Grammar" still a thing?
NOTE: Do you have a language question for John? Leave a comment or email lexiconvalley@booksmartstudios.org, and he may answer it in a future post!
This week, I want to answer two questions from the same person, Beirne Konarski, who asks:
In Indo-European, languages with gender feminine nouns tend to end in -a, but any sense of femininity for most of the nouns is long gone. Back when gender meant something in Indo-European, was the equivalent of -a stuck on to the nouns to mark them with the gender, or did -a just become a way of keeping the gender going after it ceased to mean anything?
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