[systems-of-nominal-classification] Gender disagreement or superclassing

[Felicity Meakins]

Hi all,

I am hoping some of you might be able to point me to some non-Australian 
cases of gender disagreement or superclassing. The sort of phenomena I (and 
Rob Pensalfini) are interested in occurs in Jingulu (Mirndi, 
non-Pama-Nyungan) in Australia.

Jingulu distinguishes four genders: masculine (I), feminine (II), vegetable 
(III) and neuter (IV). NP modifiers such as adjectives and demonstratives 
generally show agreement in gender with the head noun, as shown in (1), 
however modifiers can optionally 'disagree' with their head. Thus 
masculine-marked modifiers can optionally agree with heads of the feminine 
gender and neuter-marked modifiers can optionally agree with heads of the 
vegetable gender, for example (2). Masculine-marked modifiers can also 
optionally agree with heads of all four genders, as in (3) (apologies for 
the alignment of glosses).


(1) (I) Bininja bardakurr-a (III) Darrangku bardakurr-u 

man(m) good-MASC tree(n) good-NEUT


(II) Nayurni bardakurri-rni (IV) Karnarinymi bardakurri-mi 

woman(f) good-FEM spear(v) good-VEG


(2) (I) Bininja bardakurr-a (III) Darrangku bardakurr-u 

man(m) good-MASC tree(n) good-NEUT


(II) Nayurni bardakurri-rni (IV) Karnarinymi bardakurri-mi 

woman(f) good-FEM spear(v) good-VEG



(3) (I) Bininja bardakurr-a (III) Darrangku bardakurr-a 

man(m) good-MASC tree(n) good-MASC


(II) Nayurni bardakurr-a (IV) Karnarinymi bardakurr-a 

woman(f) good-MASC spear(v) good-MASC


Thanks! Felicity

_________________________________________

FELICITY MEAKINS  | ARC Research Fellow (DECRA)

Linguistics | SLCCS | University of Queensland | 

Brisbane QLD 4072 | AUSTRALIA

RM 517 | Gordon Greenwood Bldg (32) | 

' +61 7 3365 2877 | ' +61 411 404 546 | 7 +61 7 3365 6799 | * 
f.meakins at uq.edu.au | 

web www.slccs.uq.edu.au//index.html?page=127733&pid=124851
 

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