Nominal Agreement in PIE from the Areal and Typological Point of View

Abstract

Proto-Indo-European (PIE) nominal agreement is typologically unusual when compared to systems of nominal agreement in other language families of Eurasia. The remarkable cross-linguistic stability of gender has been noted by Johanna Nichols. The particular type of nominal agreement found in PIE and the early IE languages, with fused morphemes for agreement in gender, number and case, is rather rare in Eurasia. Languages in the sample come from almost all the language families of Eurasia and Africa, though at present Africa is somewhat underrepresented. Languages with nominal agreement predominate in SW Eurasia, including the Caucasus, and they are rather rare in north (N) and north east (NE) Eurasia. The different agreement patterns arose primarily in the nominative, where common gender nouns, adjectives, and pronouns had different case/number endings in contrast to neuter nouns, which did not distinguish the nominative and the accusative. Keywords: Africa; Caucasus; early Indo-European (IE) languages; Eurasia; Johanna Nichols; nominal agreement; Proto-Indo-European (PIE)