<div dir="ltr">Hi Martin and others,<div><br></div><div>If I might weigh in with two more cents, to respond to Walter and Mark's comments. I think they are right that <span style="font-size:12.8px">the "numeral classifiers" of Greater Mainland Southeast Asia are very different to other kinds of classifiers. And so as Mark suggests, drawing comparisons between them and other classifiers might not be that useful.</span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px">To respond to Walter, there are two studies of Australian languages that suggest free noun classifiers, or noun classifiers incorporated into verbs have become markers of gender agreements. The first one is discussed by Grev Corbett in some of his publications.</span></div><div><div class="gmail-csl-bib-body" style="line-height:1.35;padding-left:2em">
<div class="gmail-csl-entry">Reid, Nicholas. 1997. Class and classifier in Ngan’gityemerri. In Mark Harvey & Nicholas Reid (eds.), <i>Nominal classification in Aboriginal Australia</i>, 165–229. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.</div>
<span class="gmail-Z3988" title="url_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fzotero.org%3A2&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Abook&rft.genre=bookitem&rft.atitle=Class%20and%20classifier%20in%20Ngan'gityemerri&rft.place=Amsterdam&rft.publisher=John%20Benjamins&rft.aufirst=Mark&rft.aulast=Harvey&rft.au=Mark%20Harvey&rft.au=Nicholas%20Reid&rft.au=Nicholas%20Reid&rft.date=1997&rft.pages=165-229&rft.spage=165&rft.epage=229"></span></div></div><div><div class="gmail-csl-bib-body" style="line-height:1.35;padding-left:2em">
<div class="gmail-csl-entry">Baker, Brett. 2002. How referential is agreement? The interpretation of polysynthetic dis-agreement morphology in Ngalakgan. In Nicholas Evans & Hans-Jürgen Sasse (eds.), <i>Problems of Polysynthesis</i>, vol. 52, 51–85. (Studia Typologica, Neue Reihe). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.</div><div class="gmail-csl-entry"><br></div></div></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px">To respond to Mark, I don't think the function of classifiers is ever just 'to classify' - there are always a range of functions (see Contini-Morava and Kilarski 2013 for some ideas).</span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px">Cheers,</span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-size:12.8px">Ruth</span></div><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 22 March 2017 at 10:25, Mark W. Post <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:markwpost@gmail.com" target="_blank">markwpost@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000">
<p>Martin/All - <br>
</p>
<p>As others have already pointed out, there are two related issues
here, one terminological and the other typological. I consider the
terminological issue pretty trivial - I certainly agree that we
have less terminology than we need for the number of concepts that
we want to talk about in a more-or-less contrastive way, and while
I'm willing to bet that even those of us who share this view
probably blanched (at least initially) at the sight of the term
"genifier", at the end of the day it doesn't matter -
"grammaticalization" has more suffixes than it needs, and if you
unpack them all they don't actually add up to what we use the term
to mean, but the world keeps turning regardless. <br>
</p>
<p>But I'd take issue with the motivation for a categorical merger
in the first place (which is what I take the introduction of a
superordinate label to amount to - if that's wrong, then I've
misunderstood something). It seems to me that most of the
literature on classifiers focuses on the semantic dimension of
classification, probably because this is what stands out as exotic
from a European perspective - and, indeed, the label "classifier"
itself suggests this. And it's the semantic dimension that is
mostly being focused on when an alignment between gender systems
and classifier systems is proposed - even, and especially, when
superordinate labels like "noun classification" are proposed. But
this is only part of the story. The *function* of classifiers -
and here, I *only* mean the "numeral classifiers" of Greater
Mainland Southeast Asia - is not classification, but referential
specification. They function, that is, to individuate entities as
instances of types. That is why the most frequently-used
classifier by far in Mandarin Chinese, for example, is (almost)
semantically empty, and cliticizes to demonstratives and the
numeral 'one' in most mentions. Other languages take matters
further, by deputizing the generic classifier itself as a de facto
indefinite article - consider, for example, Nuoso Yi (data from
Liu and Gu 2011 DOI: <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/tsl.96.11liu" target="_blank">10.1075/tsl.96.11liu</a>
- apologies if the glosses don't align properly).<br>
</p>
<p>i33ti34 gu33 ʑo33 si44 la33 .<br>
coat CL catch take come <br>
‘Bring a coat (to me).’</p>
<p>Hence the frequent observation that languages with classifiers
tend to lack articles (though it's true that they don't always).<br>
</p>
<p>Given these facts, it seems that there's an at least equal
argument in favor of merging classifiers with other referential
markers, and in particular articles, so: clarticles? classicles?
artifiers? Hmmm...</p>
<p>It seems to me that what we're really talking about here is the
same thing that we usually talk about, which is that there are no
cross-linguistically watertight categories, but we want to do
typology anyway, so what do we do? We can select a semantic
parameter (a "comparative concept") in terms of which categories
may be similar across languages, but they will differ in other
respects. If we focus on those other respects, we can end up with
a different typology. It may be that the real difficulty here is
that our traditional category-labels, and the categories they are
designed to capture, are multi-dimensional.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
</font></span></p><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<p>Mark<br>
</p></font></span><div><div class="h5">
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="m_142289469985331491moz-cite-prefix">On 22/03/2017 8:34 AM, Sebastian
Nordhoff wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>And the term “gen-ifier” is completely parallel to “class-ifier” – it’s
a marker that puts a noun in a genus.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre>if "genifier" is used to put a noun in a *genus*, it is out as a marker
for the superordinate concept encompassing both noun class and gender.
Best
Sebastian
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>(Actually, since English distinguishes between “gender” and “genus”, one
might even introduce “genus” as a new feature term, a cover term for
gender and classifierhood. That would certainly be found more acceptable
to neophobics than "clender".)
Martin
On 21.03.17 20:38, Sebastian Nordhoff wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Dear all,
as someone who has not worked extensively on either of these concepts, I
still have to say that the term "genifier" strikes me as odd. My first
thought upon seeing the subject of the mail was "OK, this will be about
making something a gender, or a gene, or a knee-like thing maybe, let's
see". I was misled by terms such as "intensifier", used to make
something more intense, and certainly also, albeit more on phonological
grounds, by "gentrification", which is a widely debated topic where I
live.
The attempt to blend "GEnder" and "classiFIER" is not successful in my
view, as "-fier" is not really the important formative here; "class" is.
If there is a desire for a blend, I would rather go for "Clender" or
"Clander", which would not lead to misparsings/misinterpretations as the
one I had.
As a final note, a "classifier" does something to an X, while "gender"
is a property of an X.
(1) /ladida/ is of gender X
(2) ?/ladida/ is of classifier X
(3) ?/-dada/ is a gender
(4) /-dada/ is a classifier
It is unclear to me whether the two concepts "gender" and "classifier"
do actually have a superordinate concept. Possibly, one has to use
"gender marker" and "classifier", or "noun class" and "gender" as
subordinate concepts to arrive at a good superordinate concept.
Best wishes
Sebastian
On 03/20/2017 04:05 PM, Martin Haspelmath wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre>Dear typologists,
Cross-linguistic terminology (comparative concepts) should be both clear
and conform to the tradition, in order to preserve continuity with the
older literature.
In the case of the terms "gender" and "classifier", it seems that these
two goals cannot be achieved simultaneously without coining a new term
("genifier").
There is quite a bit of general literature on gender/classifiers (e.g.
Dixon 1986; Grinevald 2000; Aikhenvald 2000; Seifart 2010; Corbett &
Fedden 2016), but none of these works provide clear definitions of these
terms, and the more recent literature (e.g. Corbett & Fedden, and also
Seifart & Payne 2007) actually emphasizes that there is no reason to say
that gender markers and classifiers are distinct phenomena in the
world's languages.
Thus, it seems to me that we need the new term "genifier", perhaps
defined as follows:
A *genifier system* is a system of grammatical markers which occur on
nominal modifiers, predicates or anaphoric pronouns, and each of which
expresses (i.e. normally reflects, but sometimes contributes) a broad
property other than person and number of the controlling noun (i.e. for
nominal modifiers: the modificatum, for predicates: an argument, for
anaphoric pronouns: the antecedent).
The alternative to coining a new term, it seems to me, would be to
extend the meaning of the term "gender" or of the term "classifier" in
such a way that there would be no more continuity with the earlier
literature.
Given the above definition of genifier, we can perhaps define "gender"
and "numeral classifier" as follows (as arbitrary subcategories of
genifiers, defined just to preserve continuity with the older
literature):
A *gender system* (= a system of gender markers) is a system of
genifiers which includes no more than 20 genifiers and which is not
restricted to numeral modifiers.
A *numeral classifier system* is a system of genifiers which is
restricted to numeral (plus optionally other adnominal) modifiers.
I wonder if the above definitions have any obvious defects, i.e. any
cases that everyone would call gender or numeral classifier and that
wouldn't fall under the definitions, or cases that fall under them and
that nobody would call gender or numeral classifier.
Note that the new term "genifier" also has the advantage that the whole
domain can be called *genification* (rather than the cumbersome "noun
classification/nominal classification", which is also vague because
there are all kinds of "classes" or "classifications" of nouns which
have nothing to do with genifiers).
Any comments?
Thanks,
Martin
*************************
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2000. /Classifiers: A typology of noun
categorization devices/. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Corbett, Greville G. & Sebastian Fedden. 2016. Canonical gender.
/Journal of Linguistics/ 52(3). 495--531.
Dixon, R. M. W. 1986. Noun classes and noun classification in
typological perspective. In Colette Grinevald Craig (ed.), /Noun classes
and categorization/, 105--112. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Grinevald, Colette G. 2000. A morphosyntactic typology of classifiers.
In Gunter Senft (ed.), /Systems of nominal classification/, 50--92.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Seifart, Frank. 2010. Nominal classification. /Language and Linguistics
Compass/ 4(8). 719--736.
Seifart, Frank & Doris L. Payne. 2007. Nominal classification in the
North West Amazon: Issues in areal diffusion and typological
characterization. /International Journal of American Linguistics/ 73(4).
381--387.
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr">Dr Ruth Singer</div><div dir="ltr">DECRA Postdoctoral Fellow<br>Linguistics Program / Research Unit for Indigenous Language<br>School of Languages and Linguistics<br>Faculty of Arts<br>University of Melbourne 3010<br>Tel. +61 3 90353774<br><a href="http://www.findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/display/person2621" target="_blank">http://www.findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/display/person2621</a><br><a href="http://indiglang.arts.unimelb.edu.au/" target="_blank">http://indiglang.arts.unimelb.edu.au/</a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
</div>