Gender and Noun Class

[Matthew Dryer]

Don,

First, my understanding of what Corbett means when he says “genders 
always have a semantic core” is not that semantics is the main criterion 
for differentiation, just that there is a semantic core.For example, 
many languages have a masculine-feminine distinction that is largely 
arbitrary for more than 95% of the nouns, but for which there is a small 
number of nouns where the gender assignment is based on semantic male 
versus female, which constitutes the semantic core.Hence you would need 
to tell us more about gender in Uduk to provide a basis for saying that 
Uduk differs from other languages with gender.

Second, for any choice of label, it is always a specific category in a 
specific language to which the label is attached.You can use a term like 
gender for this category in Uduk and explain what the Uduk category is 
like to circumvent assumptions people may make about gender in Uduk.If 
you do that and some readers continue to make assumptions that don’t fit 
Uduk, it will only be because they have not read what you have 
said.Using some other label would be far more confusing and misleading 
than using gender or noun class.When a category in a language deviates 
from prototypical instances of similar categories in other languages, it 
is always better to use a familiar term and explain immediately how the 
category in one’s language is different from similar categories in other 
language than to use a new label.The most opaque descriptions of 
languages are generally those that insist on using novel labels for 
categories.

I hope this helps,

Matthew


On 5/10/13 11:19 AM, Don Killian wrote:
> 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
>
>

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