[Lingtyp] nominal classification (gender and classifiers)

[David Gil]

Misha,

On 01/04/2017 14:06, Michael Daniel wrote:
> *David suggested that Roon* is a counterexample. In his example, a 
> vast number of nouns may refer, roughly, either to an object or to the 
> substance produced from this object (or a part of this object). I 
> think this is indeed a good counterexample to my claim, in being an 
> example of a system that is, to a considerable extent if not 
> overwhelmingly, reference-based and flexible. I would not take the 
> counter-objection suggested by Johanna (that this is a productive 
> unmarked derivational process, or conversion) because I have a feeling 
> that this would be a way to wave off all counterexamples, which would 
> make my generalization totally non-falsifiable.
> I think that I need more details on this system - David, is there any 
> reference? - to see how exactly the system works. Obviously, not all 
> nouns may be re-conceptualized as substance in an equally easy way, at 
> least under usual circumstances (but note David's missionary example), 
> so it is interesting how overwhelming flexibility is in this system.
You've given me some important questions to add to my (ever-burgeoning) 
to-do list when I'm next back there.  Nothing I've written so far 
discusses these particular issues in any detail.

You might try looking at the following references for closely-related 
Biak, but I can't guarantee that they go into these questions either, 
plus I'm not sure things work the same way in Biak.

Mofu, Suriel (2009) Biak Morphosyntax, PhD Dissertation, Oxford 
University, Oxford.


van den Heuvel, Wilco (2006) Biak, Description of an Austronesian 
Language of

Papua, PhD Dissertation, Free University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam.


Some of the specific words that are exceptions to the overwhelming 
semantic nature of the gender distinction are the same in the two 
languages, but there are quite a few differences in the agreement 
paradigm, most notably that Roon has regularized the interaction of 
gender and number: whereas in Biak, the animate/inanimate distinction is 
present only in the (3rd person) plural (this has been cited as an 
exception to one of Greenberg's universals), in Roon it is present in 
both plural and singular.

David


-- 
David Gil

Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany

Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816

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