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<div data-externalstyle="false" dir="ltr" style="font-family: 'Calibri', 'Segoe UI', 'Meiryo', 'Microsoft YaHei UI', 'Microsoft JhengHei UI', 'Malgun Gothic', 'sans-serif';font-size:12pt;"><div>Another language of essentially the “referentially-based” type that David Gil describes is Maa (Maasai):</div><div><br></div><div><font face="Times New Roman">
</font><p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 35.45pt; text-indent: -35.45pt;"><span style='font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 10pt;'>Payne, Doris L. 1998.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Maasai gender in typological
perspective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Studies in African Linguistics</i> 27.159-175.</span></p><font face="Times New Roman">
</font><br></div><div data-signatureblock="true"><ul style="padding-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; list-style-type: disc;"><li style='color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: "Color Emoji", "Calibri", "Segoe UI", "Meiryo", "Microsoft YaHei UI", "Microsoft JhengHei UI", "Malgun Gothic", "sans-serif"; font-size: 16px;'><div>Doris Payne</div></li></ul></div><div><br></div><div style="padding-top: 5px; border-top-color: rgb(229, 229, 229); border-top-width: 1px; border-top-style: solid;"><div><font face=" 'Calibri', 'Segoe UI', 'Meiryo', 'Microsoft YaHei UI', 'Microsoft JhengHei UI', 'Malgun Gothic', 'sans-serif'" style='line-height: 15pt; letter-spacing: 0.02em; font-family: "Calibri", "Segoe UI", "Meiryo", "Microsoft YaHei UI", "Microsoft JhengHei UI", "Malgun Gothic", "sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt;'><b>From:</b> <a href="mailto:gil@shh.mpg.de" target="_parent">David Gil</a><br><b>Sent:</b> Thursday, March 30, 2017 9:32 AM<br><b>To:</b> <a href="mailto:lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org" target="_parent">lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org</a></font></div></div><div><br></div><div dir=""><div id="readingPaneBodyContent">Dear all,<br><br>Misha writes:<br>> I am unaware of any language that has a reference-based <br>> (overwhelmingly non-rigid) noun categorization device used for what is <br>> an obvious typological instance of agreement. If you are aware of such <br>> example, it would be interesting to know more about it. On the other <br>> hand, Walter's message indicates that there are consistently rigid <br>> systems that are not used for agreement - his Thai example.<br>As a possible example of a "language that has a reference-based <br>(overwhelmingly non-rigid) noun categorization device used for what is <br>an obvious typological instance of agreement", I offer Roon, a language <br>of the South Halmahera West New Guinea subgroup of Austronesian, spoken <br>off the northern coast of western New Guinea. (I believe the facts in <br>closely related Biak, for which there are two recent reference grammars, <br>are similar in the relevant respects.)<br><br>Roon has two genders, animate (encompassing humans, animals and plants) <br>and inanimate. (Gender is only marked in 3rd person, leading me to <br>wonder whether it can be collapsed with person into a single <br>higher-level feature, though Grev Corbett has tried to talk me out of <br>that!) Agreement is straightforward: verbs agree with their subjects, <br>and most nominal attributes agree with their head nouns, with respect to <br>person, number and also gender (animate/inanimate). The agreement <br>markers are prefixal, sometimes involving metathesis with the first <br>segment of the root of the host agreement target.<br><br>What's less clear is whether this is a *reference-based* <br>noun-categorization device. Against its characterization as such are a <br>*very* small set of lexical items, including for example the words for <br>'coffee' and 'money' that are grammatically inanimate even though they <br>are semantically inanimate. On the other hand, many, perhaps most <br>words, are flexible, and can belong to either class (animate or <br>inanimate) with largely predictable semantic effects. Most commonly, the <br>animate form refers to the animal/plant as a whole, while the inanimate <br>form refers to either part of the animal/plant, or a substance or <br>foodstuff made out of it. For example, one word means 'pig' when <br>animate and 'pork' when inanimate, similarly another word means 'coconut <br>tree' when animate and 'coconut (fruit)' when inanimate. (I must admit <br>I haven't checked what happens with human referents, but given that they <br>were still cooking the occasional missionary in the mid-1800s, I suspect <br>I know the answer.)<br><br>So does this count as "reference-based"?<br><br>David<br><br>-- <br>David Gil<br><br>Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution<br>Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History<br>Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany<br><br>Email: gil@shh.mpg.de<br>Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834<br>Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816<br><br>_______________________________________________<br>Lingtyp mailing list<br>Lingtyp@listserv.linguistlist.org<br>http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp<br><br></div></div></div>
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