ABSTRACT
It seems to be of special importance to have a common-sex interrogative pronoun, because in asking" Who did it 1 " one does not know beforehand whether it is a he or a she; hence most languages have only one form here (not infrequently a form which has a masculine ending), thus Gr. ti8, Goth. hWaB (the fern. form hwo given in grammars, probably never occurs as an interrogative primary), OE. hwa, E. u'ho, G. 'U'er, Du. '/.Vie, Dan. (hvo), hvem, Russ. kto, etc. Exceptions are ON. m. hverr, f. hver, m. hvarr, f. hvar and Lat. m. qui8, f. qUal, but in modern Icelandic the difference has disappeared, at any rate in the nominative (hver, hvor), and in the Romanic languages only the masculine form survives as a. common-sex form: It. chi, Fr. qui, Sp. quie.n.
