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by rubberpoliceman 7 hours ago
Animate gender didn’t split into masculine and feminine — inanimate collective plural was repurposed as feminine.
2 comments

That "repurposing" is more morphology than grammar. You also frequently find in Indo-European languages multiple cases having overlapping morphology, but that doesn't necessarily change the cases themselves. My point, in any case, is that Hittite has the older animate/inanimate genders from Proto-Indo-European (only attested in the Anatolian languages!) whereas Sanskrit has the later masculine/feminine/neuter genders.
Can you point us somewhere zo learn more about that?