Page:Nature and Origin of the Noun Genders of the Indo-European Languages.djvu/15

Rh gender, and how the history of both is to be investigated, depends entirely and exclusively on the terminations used to express gender, on the inflectional suffixes which mark sex.

In only two or three places in the whole circle of human languages has anything been found comparable with the formal gender of the Indo-European languages. In the Semitic-Hamitic group, especially, the whole language is pervaded with the idea of gender, but in a manner that is entirely different from the Indo-European, externally and internally. There are scholars who believe in a relationship between the Semitic-Hamitic family and the Indo-European, but up to the present it has not been proved; and the so-called gender of nouns is of all things least adapted to furnish an argument for a close genealogical connection. Everything goes to prove that in the matter of gender there was no common development, but that the genders had a separate history. It is accordingly correct method if we first investigate the history of noun genders in each family by itself.

"We have noticed that very few families of languages mark gender distinctions in their substantives. Even within the Indo-European, not