Gender and Noun Class

[Bakker, Dik]

Hi Don,

I am not aware of any general term, but I think noun class
IS a/the neutral term. I think one should use it, maybe with
a footnote or short remark motivating it the way you do 
in your message ('maybe historically based on semantics,
but synchronically not any longer etc', in fact just as in
many languages where, in the case of a two- or three-way system,
gender is still the term, even if the vast majority of nouns have no 
(real) gender whatsoever, and some have the 'wrong' type, 
such as 'meisje' 'girl' in dutch, which has neuter rather than 
feminine gender, since it is originally derived from a diminutive 
(meid-DIM), but no longer analysed as such.

Best,

Dik


Dik Bakker
Dept. of General Linguistics
Universities of Amsterdam & Lancaster
tel (+31) 35 544 75 78
http://www.uva.nl/profiel/d.bakker

Societas Linguistica Europaea
Secretary/Treasurer
http://www.societaslinguistica.eu/
http://www.linguisticsociety.eu/

________________________________________
Van: Discussion List for ALT [LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org] namens Don Killian [donald.killian at HELSINKI.FI]
Verzonden: vrijdag 10 mei 2013 10:19
To: LINGTYP at listserv.linguistlist.org
Onderwerp: Gender and Noun Class

Dear all,

I have read quite a number of books and articles by this point on this
subject, but despite everything I haven't been able to come to a
conclusion on something, so I thought to ask the list for suggestions
(particularly since some of the authors on the subject are on this list!).

The difference between gender and noun classes seems to be mostly
tradition rather than actual linguistic differentiations (perhaps noun
classes are generally viewed to have more categories, but even that
isn't absolute), and I've run into a terminology problem with a current
grammatical description I'm working on... mainly on what might be a more
neutral term incorporating both of these ideas.

Uduk differentiates all nouns into two categories which are for the most
part arbitrary, both phonologically and semantically (in contrast to
Corbett's comment: "When we analyse assignment systems of languages from
different families we find that genders always have a semantic core.")

As Uduk is NOT using semantics as the main criteria for differentiation
(at least not synchronically), I would like to use a more neutral term
than gender or noun class to refer to these categories. Each time I have
used gender or noun class, a number of readers have associated
biological gender/animacy with the first or Bantu-style noun class
systems with the second, and it can often end up detracting from my
focus.  I'd rather avoid any sort of general debate on what a noun
class/gender system actually is, and instead focus on the actual
grammatical system of Uduk.

Hence my question to the list.. IS there a more neutral term than noun
class or gender to refer to grammatical categories of nouns in a
language?  Agreement class isn't quite adequate because it also doesn't
necessarily refer to this being a nominal property (and noun agreement
class is too cumbersome of a term). Nominal category is awkward,
although possible.

I'm open to further suggestions people have.

Best,

Don


--
Don Killian
Researcher in African Linguistics
Department of Modern Languages
PL 24 (Unioninkatu 40)
FI-00014 University of Helsinki
+358 (0)44 5016437