<div dir="ltr"><div>Back to the question of defining gender/classifier systems on the number of classes: <br> Suppose someone has put together a database on noun genders and classifiers. You want to test a hypothesis about correlations between the number of classes and some other property, and you turn to that database. But all you can find in the database is whether the number is under or over 20. Or suppose you want to test something about the correlation of number of classes with their semantics or places of agreement, and that's not fully laid out in the database because assumptions or theoretical stances on those things are in the definitions of survey entities and the coding procedures. All you can test with is the cutoff point that defined the types of classes in the first place, so if you're looking to refine the definitions it all gets circular. The laboriously constructed database contributes little to further growth of knowledge.<br> The moral here: Arbitrary cutoffs like ±20 classes belong in the project-specific binnings or aggregations that individual researchers do on the exported data; they don't belong in the database itself. The database needs to contain the actual number of classes (plus notes on any uncertainties), full information on semantics, full information on agreement, etc. Database users export, sort, bin, calculate, repeat.<br> That was about databases; where do theory and terminology come in? Typological theory needs to inform the database design, but the database categories will always continue to need changing, and that will be in response to novelties encountered and may or may not impact or be impacted by theory. A project-specific binning probably needs a project-specific term, and someone else may choose to use the same binning and the same term, but I'm not sure that should be anything but an ad hoc convenience. (I understand "SME" to be a binning that is convenient for policy-making, and not a technical term or theoretical notion in economics.) I'd opt for putting cutoffs and thresholds into terminology and theory only if they prove to have a variety of strong correlations. On this view, "gender" and "classifier" are convenience terms, potentially throwaway. Linguists can use these and other terms with perfectly adequate clarity, as long as the exact meaning is made clear and publications give some review of what other terms have been used for the same or similar phenomenon and describe some of their similarities and differences. When enough of that kind of work is done we can make a better-informed decision about what's to be considered a category.<br> I think this is similar to what Grev said, except that I'd want even the canonical notions to be tentative, partial, and in progress. (Not just the set of referents but the actual notions and definitions.)<br><br></div>Johanna <br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 6:38 AM, Chao Li <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:chao.li@aya.yale.edu" target="_blank">chao.li@aya.yale.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>Dear Martin,<br><br></div>I am sharing a thought and contributing a penny. For a term that covers genders, noun classes, and classifiers, I'd like to suggest "sorter". It is an existing English word and its meaning is intuitively accessible. On this understanding, genders, noun classes, and classifiers share the (grammatical) function of sorting out nouns or their referents. <br><br></div>Best,<br></div>Chao<br><br><br><div><div><br><br><br></div></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div><div class="h5">On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 3:30 AM, Martin Haspelmath <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>></span> wrote:<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div class="h5">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
Eva Lindström wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><span>
I
think class and classifier should be kept distinct. This is
because they refer to different things (as was pointed out early
in this thread):
<div>- Class (as in gender or noun class) is a property of a
lexeme, involving sub-categorisation of the noun category in the
lexicon;</div>
</span><span><div>- Classifiers deal with properties of (groups of) referents.</div>
</span></blockquote>
<br>
This is similar to the point made by Greville Corbett &
Sebastian Fedden: Typical gender has rigid choice of markers (or
values), while flexible marker choice is associated with
"classifiers".<br>
<br>
But if we make this part of a definition, then we end up saying that
the distinction between English "he" and "she" is a classifier
distinction (because they classify referents, not nouns), which
would be very confusing.<br>
<br>
We also don't want to say that rigid choice/assignment implies
"gender", as pointed out by Walter Bisang:<span><br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div>This would mean that Thai has a canonical gender system and
that an example like the following (see my previous message) is
similar to Swahili:</div>
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">
<div>
<div id="m_9164441416972816287m_7817817946995014934divtagdefaultwrapper" dir="ltr" style="font-size:12pt;color:#000000;font-family:Calibri,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">
<p><br>
</p>
<p>rót [khan yàj] [khan níi]</p>
<p>car CL big CL DEM</p>
<p>‘this big car’</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
At the same time, we want to use the terms "gender" and "numeral
classifier" in a sense that is very close to everyone's intuitions.
We want to continue making comments like the following (from Corbett
& Fedden's message):<span><br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">
<div>
<div>
<p><span lang="EN-GB"></span><span lang="EN-GB">there are tiny classifier systems and large
gender systems. </span></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
We need definitions of these terms of we want to find out whether
these claims are true. Can these definitions contain numbers?
Corbett & Fedden think not:<span><br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB">Biologists
don’t say that legs must come in twos or fours, and bar
millipedes from having legs because they have too many.
Linguists allow for large tense systems and small
consonant inventories.</span></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br></span>
Yes, because we have definitions of "tense" and "consonant" that are
independent of the numbers. But economists define SMEs with
arbitrary numbers, so linguists might do so as well.<br>
<br>
Guillaume Segerer is worried that this might be reflected in the
practice of language describers:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-GB"></span>In
France, when companies grow, they tend to split into
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. </p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
But this is a discussion on LINGTYP, where we are talking about
language typology. Language description is a different matter –
descriptive linguists need a separate set of descriptive categories
from the typologists' comparative concepts.<br>
<br>
One could of course give up the goal of uniform terminology across
the discipline, as hinted by David Beck earlier:<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">
<div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">the key to terminological clarity is
being clear about your terms at point of use. I can see
this being a useful term in many contexts, but I don’t see
this as being a one-size-fits-all kind of thing that
everyone can take up in every circumstance for something
as messy and variable as classificatory categories.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
But this makes it very hard to communicate, and very hard for
newcomers to enter the discipline. Moreover, many concepts are built
on other concepts (like my proposed gender concept, built on the
genifier concept, which itself has a longish definition). There are
at least some basic concepts that everyone needs to agree on for the
discipline to be able to function and yield nonsubjective results.<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<span><br>
<br>
<br>
On 24 Mar 2017, at 08:36, Martin Haspelmath <<a href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">haspelmath@shh.mpg.de</a>> wrote:
<blockquote type="cite">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">
<div>
<div>
<div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<br class="m_9164441416972816287m_7817817946995014934Apple-interchange-newline">
<div>
<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF">On 23.03.17 19:21,
Alan Rumsey wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div class="m_9164441416972816287m_7817817946995014934WordSection1">
<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>
</div>
</blockquote>
<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>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
</span><span class="m_9164441416972816287HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><pre class="m_9164441416972816287m_7817817946995014934moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a class="m_9164441416972816287m_7817817946995014934moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:haspelmath@shh.mpg.de" target="_blank">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
</pre>
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