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Dear linguists,</div>
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<br>
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I am writing to ask if anyone is aware of, and could point me in the direction of, languages where adjectival modifiers have their own fixed noun class assignment that overrides the noun class of the head on agreement targets.</div>
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<br>
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I am currently aware of one language that exhibits this phenomenon, Kafire (Senufo), and have provided some examples below from Nikitina and Silué (2023:122-123) to exemplify the type of phenomenon I am talking about. Note that when the head
<i>pɔ̰̄ </i>'dog' is modified by an adjective, the targets for noun class agreement (the demonstrative pronoun and definite clitic) do not agree with the noun class of
<i>pɔ̰̄ </i>'dog' (CL1), but with the noun class specification that is inherent to the modifying adjectives (i.e. CL2 for
<i>gbóló </i>'big' in (b) and CL3 for <i>bī </i>'little' in (c)).</div>
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<br>
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Grateful to know if this agreement phenomenon has been attested elsewhere.</div>
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<br>
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Kind regards,</div>
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<br>
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George Lindsay</div>
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<br>
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<b><i>Examples</i></b></div>
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Kafire:</div>
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a.</div>
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wè</div>
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pɔ̰̄=w</div>
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</div>
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this.CL1</div>
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dog=CL1.DEF</div>
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</div>
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‘this dog’</div>
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<br>
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b.</div>
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jè</div>
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pɔ̰̄</div>
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gbóló=j</div>
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</div>
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this.CL2</div>
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dog</div>
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big=CL2.DEF.PL</div>
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</div>
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‘these big dogs’</div>
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<br>
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<tbody>
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c.</div>
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lè</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; line-height: 115%; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 0in; font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="elementToProof">
pɔ̰̄</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; line-height: 115%; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 0in; font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="elementToProof">
bī=l</div>
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</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; line-height: 115%; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 0in; font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="elementToProof">
this.CL3</div>
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dog</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; line-height: 115%; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 0in; font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="elementToProof">
little=CL3.DEF</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; line-height: 115%; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 0in; font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="elementToProof">
</div>
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<div style="direction: ltr; text-align: left; line-height: 115%; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 8pt; margin-left: 0in; font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="elementToProof">
‘these little dogs’</div>
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<b><br>
</b></div>
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<b><i>References</i></b></div>
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Nikitina, Tatiana, and Songfolo Lacina Silué. 2023. “Noun Class Agreement in Kafire (Senufo): A Lexical-Functional Grammar Account.”
<i>Journal of Linguistics </i>59(1):121–48.</div>
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