Gender and word formation: The PIE gender system in cross-linguistic perspective

The paper tackles the issue of gender as a non-prototypical category at the border between derivation and inflection. It explores derivational and inflectional properties of gender, setting the PIE gender system in the wider framework of nominal classification. It compares gender with other types of non-prototypical categories, such as evaluation (non-protoypical derivation) and number (nonprotoypical inflection). The discussion then turns to the rise and the development of gender systems taking agreement as their distinctive feature. Cross-linguistic data offer evidence for different patterns of development, based on differential marking of core arguments, on the grammaticalization of classifiers or of derivational affixes. Arguably, differential marking of core arguments is responsible for the rise of agreement in the earlier PIE animacy-based two-gender system, while grammaticalization of a derivational affix provided the basis for the later sexbased three-gender system. These two different origins mirror the double-faceted nature of gender, which feeds syntax, in that it provides a means for reference tracking through agreement, and also serves the lexicon, as a means for creating new words and motivating groups of words. In the final part of the paper, some possible evidence is presented, which might indicate mechanisms that can lead to the rise of agreement through the spread of a derivational affix.