Abstract
This paper deals with the origin and development of the gender resolution rule according to which the predicate adjective agrees with the masculine antecedent when there is agreement with a conjunction of subjects at least one of which denotes a male person. Apart from Croatian, such a rule exists (or existed) in the other Slavic languages, as well as in Baltic languages, so it can safely be posited for Proto-Slavic and Proto-Balto-Slavic. We further show that most contemporary and ancient Indo-European languages had such a gender resolution rule. Where such a rule does not exist (as in Germanic languages), there is a plausible historical explanation. In Hittite, which preserves the most ancient gender system of Indo-European (with only common and neuter genders, and no feminine gender), the default agreement is with the common gender noun. Recent advances in our understanding of the development of gender in Indo-European allow us to show that the rule taking the masculine as the default gender has developed from the rule taking the common gender as default. This is because the morphemes showing gender agreement on adjectives and pronouns of the masculine gender have developed from Early Proto-Indo-European morphemes expressing the common gender.
Highlights
As far as we know, Dionysus Thrax was the first grammarian to use the term ‘gender’
2. (Some) gender resolution rules in Croatian In Croatian, many constructions that require gender resolution would appear to have the masculine gender as default; we find masculine agreement in constructions with anaphoric pronouns referring to antecedents of mixed gender (7), in constructions with predicative adjectives (8) and participles (9) agreeing with complex NP subjects including conjunctions of nouns of different gender: (7) Ivan i Marija su došli
Do we know why Croatian favours the masculine gender in constructions with predicate adjectives agreeing with conjuncts of different gender? Well, it turns out that this rule is inherited from Proto-Slavic and, in all likelihood, from Proto-Indo-European
Summary
As far as we know, Dionysus Thrax was the first grammarian to use the term ‘gender’. In his Greek grammar We will be concerned with certain constructions in which the usual rules of gender agreement do not, or cannot, apply, e.g. if a masculine and a feminine noun are conjoined In such a case, there must be a rule stating which form the agreeing adjectives and demonstratives will take, and in Croatian the rule is that it must be the masculine form, as shown by the grammaticality of (5) and the ungrammaticality of (6):. In this paper we will focus only on the construction with nominal predicates, in which the masculine gender is the only choice in Croatian (the type Dječaci i djevojčice su dobri/*dobre, our example 8).
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