Gender shifts in Germanic and Slavic: semantic motivation for neuter?

Abstract

In Steinmetz 1997, 2001 it has been argued that the gender systems of the Germanic languages are of two types: neuter-default, exemplified by Icelandic and Faroese, and masculine-default as exemplified by West Germanic and Continental North Germanic. The neuter-default systems appear to continue the gender system of Proto-Germanic while the masculine-default systems resulted from a gender shift wherein the original system was restructured. The restructured, masculine-default systems are characterized by a relative paucity of neuter nouns which generally fall into definable semantic clusters, some of which are of special interest because of possible cognitive implications. There is also evidence that a similar gender shift occurred early in the history of Slavic resulting in an even more striking attrition of neuter nouns. For example, a source of lexical statistics for Russian Obratnyj Slovar’ Russkogo Jazyka (1974) (Reverse Dictionary of the Russian Language) reveals that neuter nouns account for no more than one-fifth of the nominal lexicon, and that most of these are derivatives, leaving about only 200 root nouns which are neuter, and which, as elsewhere in Slavic, are overtly marked by the ending – o (orthographically – o or – e). The present paper points out that many Russian neuter nouns like okno ‘window’ or pole ‘field’ correspond to neuter nouns in German, e.g. Fenster, Feld. Such nouns often fall into identifiable semantic categories, e.g. the notion of openings for German Fenster ‘window’, Tor ‘gate’, Loch ‘hole’, etc. The paper views the relative paucity of neuter nouns in Russian in comparison with Germanic and argues that certain neuter nouns which have neuter counterparts in German and other Germanic languages can be regarded as remnants of earlier, larger neuter clusters. Examples include jajco ‘egg’, corresponding to German Ei, Scandinavian (and English) egg, and koleso ‘wheel’, which is cognate with the English word and with other nouns like Dutch wiel or Scandinavian hjul, and synonymous with German Rad, all of which are neuter. Many of these clusters have lost members in historical times, cf. Russian glaz (masculine) ‘eye’ which has nearly replaced earlier oko (neuter). The paper contends that persistently neuter nouns in Germanic and Slavic reveal the existence of certain semantic classes that otherwise would perhaps escape detection.