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masculine and neuter genders, divided basically between animate and 
inanimate objects. For most noun classes the PIE endings can be reconstructed 
as follows: 
              Animate Inanimate 
   Subject     *-s      *-0 
   Object      *-m      *-0 
For animate nouns, *-s indicated the source of action, *-m the thing acted 
upon; the zero ending indicates no syntactic role. The basic idea is that 
only living things can act upon other things, so only animate nouns could 
take the *-s. 

Such a system is characteristic of active/stative languages. Other
features of PIE fit in with this observation; for instance, in PIE objects
like fire and water which are inanimate but move seemingly of their own
will have two separate names. In many languages with an active-stative
distinction there are such pairs of words. As this distinction was lost in
IE, different branches retained just one of the words: e.g. English water,
Greek hydor, Hittite watar form one group (from PIE *wed-), while Latin
aqua is from PIE *akwa:-.

The animate nouns are the historical source for the masculine gender, and
the inanimate nouns for the neuter. This is why in all the classic IE
languages the neuter nominative and accusative have identical forms, and
the only basic difference between masculine and neuter nouns is in the
accusative.

Earlier historical linguists cheerfully reconstructed eight cases for PIE,
on the model of Sanskrit; but the IE languages with many cases are now
considered to be innovative, not conservative. The other cases developed
from postpositions or derivational suffixes.  Luwian, a sister language of
Hittite, for instance, has no genitive, but has an adjective-forming
suffix -assi, as in harmah-assi-s 'of the head'. (This is an adjective,
not a genitive, because it can be declined.) Genitives in other languages
often seem to be developments of cognates to this suffix. 

PIE didn't bother much with specifying plurals, but when it did, it added
an *-s or other endings. The neuter plural in all IE languages is not
descended from this, however-- active/stative languages typically don't
mark plurals for inanimate nouns-- but is instead a collective noun,
treated grammatically as a singular. This collective noun ended in *-a in
the nominative and accusative, and eventually it developed into the
feminine, which in all the old IE languages has the same form in the
nominative singular as does the neuter plural nominative- accusative. It
is also why the Greek neuter plural took a singular verb. 

The reason it is called the feminine, of course, is that nouns indicating
females fell in this gender most of the time. This is puzzling, and
probably we must accept it as a fact whose explanation can't be recovered
from the depths of time.
===============================================================================
29. What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?
                                                                [--markrose] 
According to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language determines the
categories and much of the content of thought. "We dissect nature along
lines laid down by our native languages... We cannot talk at all except by
subscribing to the organization and classification of data which the
[speech community] decrees," said Whorf, in LANGUAGE, THOUGHT, AND REALITY
(1956). "The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large
extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group," said
Sapir. 

Both were students of Amerindian languages, and were drawn to this
conclusion by analysis of the grammatical categories and semantic
distinctions found in these languages, fascinatingly different from those
found in European ones. (Neither linguist used the term 'Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis', however; Whorf referred to the 'linguistic relativity
principle'. Moreover, the principle was almost entirely elaborated by
Whorf alone.)

The idea enjoyed a certain vogue in the mid-20th century, not only among linguists but
among anthropologists, psychologists, and science fiction writers.

However, the strong form of the hypothesis is not now widely believed. The
conceptual systems of one language, after all, can be explained and
understood by speakers of another. And grammatical categories do not
really explain cultural systems very well.  Indo-European languages make
gender a grammatical category, and their speakers may be sexist-- but
speakers of Turkish or Chinese, languages without grammatical gender, are
not notably less sexist.

Whorf's analysis of what he called "Standard Average European" languages
is also questionable. E.g. he claims that "the three-tense system of SAE
verbs colors all our thinking about time." Only English doesn't have three
tenses; it has two, past and present; future events are expressed by the
present ("I see him tomorrow"), or by a modal expression, merely one of a
large class of such synthetic expressions. And for that matter, English
distinguishes more like six than three times ("I had gone, I went, I just
arrived, I'm going, I'm about to go, I'll go").

To prove his point, Whorf collected stories of confusions brought about by
language. For instance, a man threw a spent match into what looked like a
pool of water; only there was decomposing waste in the water, and escaping
gas was ignited by the spark-- boom!  But it's not clear that any
*linguistic* act is involved here. The man could think the pool looked
like water without thinking of the word 'water'; and he could fail to
notice the flammable vapors without doing any thinking at all. 

A weak form of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis-- that language influences
without determining our categories of thought-- still seems reasonable,
and is even backed up by some psychological experiments-- e.g. Kay &
Kempton's finding that, in distinguishing color triads, a pair
distinguished by color names can seem more distinct than a pair with the
'same' name which are actually more divergent optically (American
Anthropologist, March 1984).

It should be emphasized that, in their willingness to consider the idea
that non-Western people have languages and worldviews that match the
European's in precision and elegance, Sapir and Whorf were far ahead of
their time.

For a spirited and very readable defense of Whorf, see Suzette Haden
Elgin's THE LANGUAGE IMPERATIVE (2000).
===============================================================================
30. Languages keep simplifying-- how did they ever become complex?
                                                               [--markrose]
This question starts with an observation: the classical Indo-European 
languages, such as Latin, Greek, Old English, and Sanskrit, were highly 
inflected, while their modern descendants are not. For instance, French 
nouns have entirely lost the Latin case system, and French verbs have lost 
entire classes of forms, such as the passive voice. 

It's natural to ask: how did the classical languages get so complex in the 
first place? Why are there inflecting languages at all?  Why don't they 
all become isolating, like Chinese? 

The answer is that there are also complicating tendencies in language. 
Habitual idioms can become particles, which can become inflections-- 
a process called grammaticalization. 

For instance, the future and conditional tenses in Romance languages don't 
derive from classical Latin, but the infinitive plus forms of 'to have'. 
French has rather complicated verb clusters (je ne le lui ai pas donne) 
which are perhaps best analyzed as single verbs showing both subject and 
object agreement. 

Another example is the plethora of cases in Finnish, many of which derive 
from postpositions. Roger Lass has pointed out a cycle in Germanic 
languages where perfectives are developed, merge with the imperfect, 
and are developed anew. 

Chinese is not immune from this phenomenon-- Mandarin already has verbal 
particles like perfective le, or nominal particles like the possessive
/adjectivizing de. The diminutive -r even merges with the preceding 
syllable; e.g. dian3 + -r --> diar3 'a bit'.
===============================================================================
31. Where did (some word or phrase) come from?
                                                            [--markrose]
If you get a snarky response to such questions on sci.lang, it's because 
some people think you ought to look in a dictionary first. The American 
Heritage Dictionary traces words back (where possible) to Proto-Indo-European; 
and the massive Oxford English Dictionary, available at most libraries, 
contains not only etymologies but illustrative citations through the centuries. 

When it comes to word and phrase origins, most people's standard of proof 
seems to be "Doesn't violate the laws of physics!" But a plausible story is 
not a proof. The three most important types of evidence in etymology are 
citations, citations, citations. If you have some amusing theory that "the 
whole nine yards" derives from haberdashery, or baseball, or mortuaries, 
you'd better have appropriate examples from those fields in the right 
historical period. 

Anyway, here are brief notes on a few terms that have been asked about 
more than once on sci.lang. (Also see the alt.usage.english FAQ.) 

OK 

There's half a dozen explanations for this, but only one correct one, 
demonstrated with hundreds of citations by Allen Walker Read in 1964: 
OK stands for oll korrect, and dates to a fad for humorous mis-abbreviations 
which started in Boston newspapers in 1838. It spread nationwide when 
supporters of Martin Van Buren organized the "OK Club" during the 1840 
presidential campaign (giving the term a double meaning, since Van Buren's 
nickname was Old Kinderhook). 

Usted 

Some people have wondered if the Spanish formal second person pronoun Usted 
came from the Arabic honorific 'usta:dh. It doesn't; it's a well-attested 
abbreviation of vuestra merced 'your mercy'. There are transitional forms 
such as vuasted, vuesarced, voarced, as well as parallel constructions like 
usia from vuestra sen~oria, ucencia from vuestra excelencia. Compare also
Portuguese vossa merce^ --> vosmece^ --> voce^, as well as Catalan voste 
and Gallego vostede. Finally, note that the abbreviation Usted doesn't appear 
until 130 years after the Moors had been kicked out of Spain. 

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