Anatolian and the Indo-European Feminine

Abstract

Luraghi (2009) presents a good argument that the Proto-Indo-European *-(e)h2 suffix, which came to be an inflection marker of the feminine grammatical gender in the nuclear Indo-European subgroups, originally had a derivational function, forming abstract nouns from corresponding adjectives and other nouns, e.g. néwo-teh2-t-s ‘newness, novelty’ < *néwos ‘new’. However, Anatolian does not show feminine gender as an inflectional category in the same way that the other IE languages do. Some Anatolian languages, however, do make use of *(e)h¬2 as a derivational suffix, especially Luwian and Lycian. Hittite has a feminizing suffix that can be traced to a different PIE origin. Therefore, I intend to demonstrate the relative chronologies of these developments, namely that only after Anatolian broke off into its own subgroup did the suffix *-eh2 transition from its derivational to inflectional function within nuclear Indo-European.

Proceedings of the Linguistics Conference at UGA 2024

Published November 24, 2025