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This all makes very good sense, Johanna.<br>
<br>
But I have three minor points (which we probably agree on as well):<br>
<br>
– one needs a definition of "gender"/"classifier" if one wants to
"put together a database on noun genders and classifiers" (and my
definition of "genifier" was intended to provide precisely this)<br>
<br>
– the discipline's concepts may always be "tentative, partial, and
in progress", but a specific project's definitions must be clear-cut
– especially if it's a Ph.D. dissertation or M.A. thesis project<br>
<br>
– "gender" and "classifier" may be convenience terms ("potentially
throwaway"), but the terms will not disappear, even if some of us
stop using them; so it may not be a bad idea to give them
definitions that correspond to their actual use <br>
<br>
(And I'd argue that "gender" is defined with respect to the number
of markers in traditional practice; I suspect that Greville Corbett
<a href="wals.info/feature/30A">did not count Kilivila as having
gender</a> because it has over 100 "classifiers", even though it
has gender-like agreement.)<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Martin<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 28.03.17 02:28, Johanna NICHOLS
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAHDpjwq53tnt1T4-BPEeCmaRpGyOPssUfwo=6OTtknqyN5qO4w@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=ISO-8859-1">
<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 moz-do-not-send="true"
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
moz-do-not-send="true"
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 moz-do-not-send="true"
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 moz-do-not-send="true" 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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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Martin Haspelmath (<a 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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