[systems-of-nominal-classification] Introduction: Ruth Singer

Mon Jul 14 23:32:42 UTC 2014

Does it have-have to be these exact languages or would other languages of
the same genealogical grouping that have been identified as having gender
agreement in verbs also suffice?

/Hedvig

2014-07-15 1:23 GMT+02:00 Hedvig Skirgård <hedvig.skirgard at gmail.com>:

> Oh, please don't apologise - this is most interesting. Thank you! I'm
> afraid it's very late here, so I'll be brief. I'm cc:ing Ger and Michael as
> well.
>
> Indeed, I think you are right. Just for full information, these are the
> languages with a  clear "yes" on F116:
>
> Arammba [stk]
> Anindilyakwa [aoi]
>
> Gunwinggu [gup]
>
> Imonda [imn]
>
> Kilivila [kij]
>
> Manam [mva]
>
> Mian [mpt]
>
> Sudest [tgo]
>
> Telefol [tlf]
> Tiwi [tiw]
> Xaracuu [ane]
>
>
> I'll see if I can help you with Chichewa and the algonquian languages, I
> think I know some good people.
>
> /Hedvig
>
>
> 2014-07-15 0:39 GMT+02:00 Ruth Singer <ruth.singer at gmail.com>:
>
> Hi Hedvig,
>>
>> Here is the list (now 14 languages). The survey was aimed at
>> investigating lexicalised argreement - the lexicalisation of verbal
>> gender agreement. I added the column on noun-incorporation just because it
>> seems to be related to the development of lexicalised agreement in some
>> language groups. But I was surprised how strong the correlation was between
>> having a strongly semantically-based gender system and having
>> noun-incorporation.
>>
>>
>>   *Language*
>>
>> *Lexicalised agreement*
>>
>> *Arguments lexicalised*
>>
>> *Percentage of verbs involved*
>>
>> *Noun-incorporation*
>>
>> Alamblak (PNG, Sepik)
>>
>> N
>>
>> -
>>
>> -
>>
>> Y
>>
>> Barasano (Colombia, Tucanoan)
>>
>> N
>>
>> -
>>
>> -
>>
>> Y
>>
>> Burushaski (Pakistan, isolate)
>>
>> N
>>
>> -
>>
>> -
>>
>> N
>>
>> Chinantec languages (Mexico, Oto-Manguean)
>>
>> Y
>>
>> S, O
>>
>> -
>>
>> Y
>>
>> Ket
>>
>> (Russia, Yenseian)
>>
>> Y
>>
>> A, S, O
>>
>> -
>>
>> Y
>>
>> Manambu
>>
>> (PNG, Sepik)
>>
>> N
>>
>> -
>>
>> -
>>
>> N
>>
>> Mawng
>>
>> (Australia, Iwaidjan)
>>
>> Y
>>
>> A, S, O
>>
>> 20%
>>
>> N
>>
>> Ngan’gityemerri
>>
>> (Australia, Southern Daly)
>>
>> Y
>>
>> A
>>
>> small
>>
>> Y (body parts only)
>>
>> Ngarinyin
>>
>> (Australia, Wororan)
>>
>> N
>>
>> -
>>
>> -
>>
>> N
>>
>> Passamaquoddy-Maliseet
>>
>> (Canada, Algonquian)
>>
>> Y
>>
>>
>>
>> O, ?A, ?S
>>
>> 3%
>>
>> Y(not syntactic)
>>
>> Seneca
>>
>> (United States, Iroquoian)
>>
>> N
>>
>> -
>>
>> -
>>
>> Y
>>
>> Swahili (East Africa, Bantu)
>>
>> N
>>
>> -
>>
>> -
>>
>> N
>>
>> Tiwi
>>
>> (Australia, isolate)
>>
>> Y
>>
>> O
>>
>> small
>>
>> Y
>>
>> Tunica
>>
>> (United States, isolate)
>>
>> Y
>>
>> A, S?, O?
>>
>> -
>>
>> Y
>>
>> The way I came up with this sample is as follows:
>> I started with the 53 languages that Corbett (2008) lists as having
>> semantically-based gender assignment in WALS.
>> I identified that 28 of these 53 languages had gender agreement in the
>> verb through: published grammatical descriptions, Surrey morphology group
>> databases available online and the Person Agreement Database available
>> through the Typological Database System.
>> I excluded languages whose gender systems have a strict semantic systems
>> or only a weak semantic basis - i.e. if female and male humans were the
>> main semantically-based distinction. This excluded most 2-gender systems.
>>
>> I wanted to find out about lexicalised agreement, which is rarely
>> mentioned in grammatical descriptions so most of my information comes from
>> responses to an email I sent to linguists who are experts in a particular
>> language. So I ended up with information for 14 of the 28 langauges. No
>> doubt this is biased in favour of a positive response - i.e. linguists were
>> more likely to respond to my email if the description of lexicalised
>> agreement that I gave in the email sounded like something that they were
>> familiar with from the language they work on.
>>
>> I have listed below the 14 languages I did not get a response for - if
>> anybody knows a helpful expert in one of the missing languages please let
>> me know. There are just 3 questions in the survey so it should only take 5
>> minutes. For a number of these languages I did get supportive emails in
>> response - i.e. the linguists were keen to help but they didn't get around
>> to responding to the survey for one reason or another.
>>
>> Archi
>>
>> Campa (Axininca)
>>
>> Chicheŵa (Niger-Congo)
>>
>> Cree (Plains)
>>
>> Diola-Fogny Atlantic, Niger-Congo. Spoken in Senegal and Gambia
>>
>> Hunzib
>>
>> Marind
>>
>> Maybrat
>>
>> Ojibwa (Eastern)
>>
>> Oneida
>>
>> Paumarí
>>
>> Taiap
>>
>> Tidore
>>
>> Wari'
>>
>> I have data for a number of other Australian languages but since these
>> were not in Corbett's original 53 language sample I have excluded them, to
>> try and make it a less biased sample, although of course it is rather
>> opportunistic.
>>
>> Hedvig, I think what I am investigating is sort of orthogonal to your
>> questionnaire question:
>> F116 Do verbs classify the shape, size, consistency or position of
>> absolutive arguments by means of incorporated nouns, verbal affixes or
>> suppletive verb stems?
>>
>> The languages with noun-incorporation that I am more familiar with -
>> Australian languages - mostly would code 'no' to this question. They
>> incorporate generic nouns which are not the kind of classifiers mentioned
>> in the question. Anindilyakwa is an exception but the other Australian
>> languages I am familiar with incorporate generic nouns with meanings such
>> as 'tree', 'vegetable food' etc. A question which was added when we coded
>> the Australian data for the Sahul work is:
>>
>> Is plant status a relevant category in the noun class/gender system?
>>
>> This would probably pick out many Australian language nominal
>> classification systems but wouldn't include the noun-incorporation
>> classifiers. In any case, the categories each Australian language uses are
>> not completely commensurable.
>>
>> Apologies for the long email!
>>
>> Ruth
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 2:14 AM, Hedvig Skirgård <hedvig.skirgard
>> @gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Ruth and everyone,
>>>
>>> I just had a quick question, which are these 13 languages?
>>>
>>> In the questionnaire we are using in the Nijmegen Typological Survey
>>> there is a question that was also applied in the Sahul and Melansia-sample
>>> in publications by Michael Dunn, Ger Reesink, yourself et al.
>>>
>>> F116 Do verbs classify the shape, size, consistency or position of
>>> absolutive arguments by means of incorporated nouns, verbal affixes or
>>> suppletive verb stems?
>>>
>>> Out of the 176 languages that were answered for that questions 165 are
>>> coded as "no", 18 as "?" and 11 as  "yes". The questions is not limited to
>>> the more specific questions of yours, but I was just curious about the
>>> specific languages.
>>>
>>> I'm not that surprised by what you describe, but perhaps I would be if I
>>> had more experience. Isn't it expected from what we know of
>>> grammaticalization paths of systems of nominal classification? Again,
>>> please excuse my ignorance concerning the specifics of noun incorporation
>>> in Australian languages.
>>>
>>> /Hedvig
>>>
>>>
>>> 2014-07-14 1:47 GMT+02:00 Ruth Singer <ruth.singer at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>
>>>> I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne (Australia).
>>>> I have been interested in nominal classification since I began my PhD in
>>>> 2002. That was a description of a few topics in the Mawng language, a
>>>> non-Pama Nyungan language spoken in northern Australia. Mawng which has
>>>> what is morphologically a straightforward semantically-based five gender
>>>> system but the uses of the system is more similar to those described for
>>>> nominal classifiers in other Australian languages - both those in NP
>>>> classifier constructions and those that are analysed as incorporated nouns
>>>> in verbs. In my PhD I looked at how verbal gender agreement is involved in
>>>> the negotiation of meaning in discourse - how it interacts with the
>>>> meanings of verbs and the discourse context. And also how gender agreement
>>>> in verbs becomes lexicalised and what this says about its more productive
>>>> functions.
>>>>
>>>> Officially I am working on projects that look at sociolinguistics and
>>>> multilingualism at present but also intonation. But I have been revising a
>>>> book manuscript that develops some of the ideas in my PhD called The
>>>> dynamics of nominal classification: productive and lexicalised uses of
>>>> gender agreement in Mawng. It includes a rather small typological
>>>> survey which surprisingly suggests that there is a correlation between a
>>>> language having verbal gender agreement for 3 or more strongly
>>>> semantically-based genders and having noun-incorporation into verbs.
>>>> In other words, if a language has one form of nominal classification it is
>>>> more likely to also have another form. Does this surprise the rest of you?
>>>> Maybe I am just hung up on old-fashioned typological ideas of
>>>> complementarity - i.e. if a language has feature X it has no need of
>>>> feature Y. The survey only included 13 languages, because it was actually
>>>> designed to look at another feature, and I since I did it by
>>>> contactinglinguists I didn't know by email I didn't get a lot of responses.
>>>>
>>>> Look forward to many interesting discussions!
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Ruth
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>>> Groups "Systems of nominal classification" group.
>>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>>> an email to
>>>> systems-of-nominal-classification+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
>>>> To post to this group, send email to
>>>> systems-of-nominal-classification at googlegroups.com.
>>>> Visit this group at
>>>> http://groups.google.com/group/systems-of-nominal-classification.
>>>> To view this discussion on the web visit
>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/systems-of-nominal-classification/34717aae-52b5-4349-ac18-dd2b6b1b3f21%40googlegroups.com
>>>> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/systems-of-nominal-classification/34717aae-52b5-4349-ac18-dd2b6b1b3f21%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>
>>>> .
>>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Systems of nominal classification" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to systems-of-nominal-classification+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to systems-of-nominal-classification at googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/systems-of-nominal-classification.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/systems-of-nominal-classification/CAHHFGT1taqN5hdshapOmy-GC1ANZx73xZPEtArP7xjfAtU8fNg%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the NOMINAL-CLASSIFICATION list, click the following link:
&*TICKET_URL(NOMINAL-CLASSIFICATION,SIGNOFF);
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/nominal-classification/attachments/20140715/5f873897/attachment.htm>