<story><title>The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter</title><url>https://dannybate.com/2021/03/15/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-latin-neuter/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jgwil2</author><text>Surprised the article didn&amp;#x27;t mention the Spanish definite article &lt;i&gt;lo&lt;/i&gt;, which can be paired with a masculine adjective to form a nominal phrase meaning the abstract notion of the adjective: &lt;i&gt;lo mismo&lt;/i&gt; - the same [thing], &lt;i&gt;lo bueno&lt;/i&gt; - the good, that which is good. My understanding is this derives from the Latin neuter as well.&lt;p&gt;Edit: why on earth is this being downvoted? Seriously confused - is something here wrong or controversial?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Sniffnoy</author><text>I didn&amp;#x27;t downvote, but if it&amp;#x27;s being downvoted, it&amp;#x27;s probably because the article &lt;i&gt;does&lt;/i&gt; mention &amp;quot;lo&amp;quot;, although only in the context of Asturian, not standard Spanish.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Distinct but unofficial Romance languages like [...] Asturian (spoken in Asturias, a part of Spain) seem to have definite articles (equivalent to English the) for three genders, not two. Asturian has el for masculine nouns, la for feminine and lo for those nouns termed ‘neuter’. [...] The key question is whether these supposed neuter definite articles demonstrate the existence of a neuter gender. Again, sadly, the answer is no. These definite articles and the nouns they are used with (no matter what their origins) seem not to constitute a neuter gender, but rather to signify that the noun is something abstract or a physical mass – that is, an indivisible substance, like water or gold.  [...]  Why does this contradict the existence of a neuter gender? Because we find this “mass gender” (Harmon 2007) used with nouns that were not neuter in Latin, and because nouns in these languages can appear both with and without the feature, according to whether they have a mass meaning or not. This is therefore not a grammatical feature on the same level as the masculine and feminine genders; instead, the mass gender is a feature of nouns determined by semantics – to what sort of thing the noun refers.&lt;p&gt;If you wanted to talk about &amp;quot;lo&amp;quot; in standard Spanish, it would make more sense to start from the starting point of what&amp;#x27;s discussed in the article -- e.g., &amp;quot;The &amp;#x27;lo&amp;#x27; construction actually exists in standard Spanish as well, although it&amp;#x27;s more restricted than in Asturian; rather than being used with any mass noun, it&amp;#x27;s used to mean...&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>The Decline and Fall of the Latin Neuter</title><url>https://dannybate.com/2021/03/15/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-latin-neuter/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jgwil2</author><text>Surprised the article didn&amp;#x27;t mention the Spanish definite article &lt;i&gt;lo&lt;/i&gt;, which can be paired with a masculine adjective to form a nominal phrase meaning the abstract notion of the adjective: &lt;i&gt;lo mismo&lt;/i&gt; - the same [thing], &lt;i&gt;lo bueno&lt;/i&gt; - the good, that which is good. My understanding is this derives from the Latin neuter as well.&lt;p&gt;Edit: why on earth is this being downvoted? Seriously confused - is something here wrong or controversial?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thaumasiotes</author><text>&amp;gt; My understanding is this derives from the Latin neuter as well.&lt;p&gt;Does it? Spanish articles derive from Latin &lt;i&gt;ille &amp;#x2F; illa &amp;#x2F; illud&lt;/i&gt; [&amp;quot;that&amp;quot;, as contrasted with &amp;quot;this&amp;quot;]. The neuter (nominative) form is &lt;i&gt;illud&lt;/i&gt;. It is not obvious how this would have resulted in the form &lt;i&gt;lo&lt;/i&gt;. Wiktionary suggests ( &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wiktionary.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;lo#Spanish&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wiktionary.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;lo#Spanish&lt;/a&gt; ) that it derives from the masculine form &lt;i&gt;illum&lt;/i&gt;, which makes much more phonological sense. (-m was already so weak in Latin that a syllable ending in -m completely disappeared when followed by a vowel.)</text></comment>