Abstract

The gender assignment of some neuter nouns such as 'child' or particularly 'girl' has been a puzzle, since their referents are human animate and possess natural sex. Why isn't the feminine gender used for a girl? In this paper, we argue that this peculiar gender assignment can date back to a period when Proto-Indo-European was spoken . The gender system in Proto-Indo-European was binary between active and inactive and the choice of gender was partially related to the ability to reproduce. The use of neuter for small children or girls can be seen as a residue of the world view commonly employed by Proto-Indo-European speakers. Therefore, historical analysis is indispensable in this case to reveal an underlying semantic system of gender assignment