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I have nothing against arbitrariness when arbitrariness is needed.
But is it ?<br>
When it comes to counting noun classes in African languages for
example, I don't know of any general overview in the litterature.
Since I have access to (nearly) all existing data on Atlantic
languages, it took me about an hour to put together <br>
all the figures (available on request of course). If every
specialist does the same for every area, we will soon be able to
propose a non-arbitrary threshold, if such a thing exists.<br>
<br>
Martin's comparison with SME definition is unfortunate : in
France, there are specific constraints for companies with more
than 50 employees. As a result, when companies grow, they tend to
split in smaller entities to avoid such constraints. Here the
arbitrary threshold influences the observed reality. Along this
line, the risk would be that "typologically-oriented" descriptions
might be influenced by the arbitrary threshold posited by
typologists. <br>
<br>
Guillaume<br>
<br>
Le 24/03/2017 à 09:36, Martin Haspelmath a écrit :<br>
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On 23.03.17 19:21, Alan Rumsey wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:14.0pt;font-family:Calibri">Those of us
who have worked on languages with 2-5 such classes (in my
case Ungarinyin) have sometimes called them ‘genders’,
while those who have worked on languages with more have
called them ‘noun classes’. </span></p>
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<br>
I had presupposed in my earlier messages that there is no
distinction between these two types, and that they should be
called "genders" – I took this as established by Corbett (1991).
As Johanna Nichols noted, the term "noun class" is vague, so for
cross-linguistic purposes, "gender" is surely better.<br>
<br>
(One might feel that neglecting the sex-based vs. non-sex-based
distinction is not such a good idea, as in Bernhard Wälchli's
message, but it seems to me that one really shouldn't use the term
"gender" anymore for sex-based distinctions, at least in typology.
I take Corbett (1991) as foundational for all of us.)<br>
<br>
But the problems with Corbett (1991) are<br>
<br>
– that his definition of gender is based on the notion of
"agreement" (for which there is no clear definition, cf. Corbett
(2006), who only provides a definition of canonical agreement)<br>
<br>
– that the distinction between "gender" and "numeral classifier"
is (in part) based on the idea that gender markers are affixes and
numeral classifiers are free forms, but there is no clear
definition of "affix" (there is a definition of "free form", as
occurring on its own in a complete utterance – and numeral
classifiers are surely bound by this criterion)<br>
<br>
– that the distinction between "features" (like gender) and
markers (like classifiers) is far from clear-cut<br>
<br>
Moreover, Corbett himself has given up the distinction between
gender and other classifiers (there's only a canonical definition
of gender now), as have others such as Ruth Singer, Sasha
Aikhenvald, and Frank Seifart. But I still want to talk about
"gender" as a comparative concept (as well as about "numeral
classifiers" – a student of mine just wrote a nice MA thesis about
this topic).<br>
<br>
Guillaume Segerer points out that some Atlantic languages have up
to 31 classes, and it would seem odd to exclude them from having
gender on the basis of a definition that arbitrarily stops at 20.
I agree that this would seem odd, but I need to point out that <b>it
wouldn't matter</b>. Comparative concepts are not designed to
give the same results in all cases that seem similar enough to us
(or some of us), but <b>to allow rigorous, intersubjective
cross-linguistic comparison</b>. Comparative concepts must
sometimes be arbitrary, because the world consists of many
continuities, and if we still want to discuss differences with
words, we need to make arbitrary cuts (think of the importance of
SMEs in economics – small and medium-size enterprises, defined
arbitrarily as having fewer than 250 employees).<br>
<br>
Maybe it will turn out that some other, less arbitrary concept
will give even better cross-linguistic generalizations. But for
the time being, we have the term "gender" as a comparative concept
(especially in legacy works such as Corbett's WALS maps), and my
definition ("A <b>gender system</b> (= 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") seems
to be the only definitional proposal currently available.<br>
<br>
Best wishes,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>)
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10
D-07745 Jena
&
Leipzig University
IPF 141199
Nikolaistrasse 6-10
D-04109 Leipzig
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<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Guillaume Segerer<br>
<i>LLACAN UMR 8135 - CNRS INALCO</i></div>
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