[Lingtyp] nominal classification (gender and classifiers)

Sat Apr 1 11:17:29 UTC 2017

As a small followup to the previous email - I did not think of the
pejorative and size effects, and their connection, in this way before this
tread, so I am grateful to those comments that enlightened me. This is
exactly what happens in Archi, to a limited extent, and I wonder how
widespread size and/or attitude related gender shift is. Is there a
cross-linguistic study of this? Could you provide more such examples?

To re-capitulate - I am interested in the cases of languages where nouns,
without changing form, shift between different gender (or gender-like)
categories to convey size or evaluation meanings. This query is wider than
the discussion above, and I would accept also cases as described by
Katharina for Movima, because Movima category shift (to me, non-gender)
conveys the same or similar functional load as Maasai category shift (to
me, gender). For example, in Archi, the word child works in exactly the
same way as Movima.

If I could get a small collection of such examples, I could make a short
summary of the topic.

Michael

2017-04-01 14:06 GMT+03:00 Michael Daniel <misha.daniel at gmail.com>:

> Dear all,
>
> re the 3+ examples provided as a counterexamples for my very tentative
> generalization. I accept them, but consider them as such to different
> extents.
>
> *David suggested that Roon* is a counterexample. In his example, a vast
> number of nouns may refer, roughly, either to an object or to the substance
> produced from this object (or a part of this object). I think this is
> indeed a good counterexample to my claim, in being an example of a system
> that is, to a considerable extent if not overwhelmingly, reference-based
> and flexible. I would not take the counter-objection suggested by Johanna
> (that this is a productive unmarked derivational process, or conversion)
> because I have a feeling that this would be a way to wave off all
> counterexamples, which would make my generalization totally
> non-falsifiable.
> I think that I need more details on this system - David, is there any
> reference? - to see how exactly the system works. Obviously, not all nouns
> may be re-conceptualized as substance in an equally easy way, at least
> under usual circumstances (but note David's missionary example), so it is
> interesting how overwhelming flexibility is in this system.
>
> *Doris suggested Maasai* as a similar situation. I would argue that it is
> not fully similar, though a counterexample in its own way. In her paper,
> she describes how Maasai nouns shift between masculine and feminine classes
> depending on whether the speaker construes them as small or big or wants to
> convey a pejorative meaning. After reading about this data, I would
> probably separate size-effect from evaluative effect; and would certainly
> distinguish between flexibility and reference-based-ness. Both - size-based
> and attitude-based gender shifts (or switches, as I think Sasha Aikhenvald
> calls them) lead to flexibility, but not both are equally reference-based
> in the strict sense. Evalutative effects are less (or not) related to the
> property of the referent but convey speaker attitude. (In this sense,
> David's example provides what seems to be a truly reference-based effect to
> a much greater extent. You could argue even here that speaker's stance is
> involved, i.e. the same tree may be considered as an object or a substance,
> but this, again, would probably make my claim non-falsifiable). I also
> think that size-based effects are more reference-based than
> pejorative/politeness effects - though size-effects also include a great
> deal of speaker's subjectivity, more than in the object-substance example.
>
> I think the distinction between flexibility of gender (wider) and
> reference- vs discourse/attitude-based systems is an important one. The
> former is a more general and more formal notion, the latter are functional
> subtypes of the former, what a flexible system may convey (probably a scale
> rather than a true taxonomy).
>
> Also, I could argue that speaker attitude (at least evaluation - good vs.
> bad) is still compatible with my original functional idea that you need to
> have a strong anchor for agreement, because speaker attitude holds through
> an utterance; but this would be another way of being an anchor, and
> certainly modifies my original claim - may be rightly. So in any sense this
> is a counterexample to the tentative generalization and an adjustment for
> the functional explanation. If there are more examples like that, I would
> now modify the original claim in the sense that gender systems (defined as
> involving agreement) tend to be rigid but may become flexible - but
> flexible more on discourse/indexical basis than on reference-basis. David's
> system remains a counterexample.
>
> Finally, *Katharina suggested Movima* as a counterexample. In Movima,
> nominal categorization is expressed by articles, and category assignment is
> flexible. This I would probably not accept as counter-example, for the
> following reason. To me, Movima is not a clear case of gender system
> (contra Martin above), because it is not a clear case of agreement. Typical
> agreement involves different lexical items being 'hosts' to agreement
> markers across different constituents. Articles are commonly considered
> grammatical elements, and described as periphrastic nominal markers. Under
> this view, articles can not be considered targets of agreement because,
> being grammatical, they belong to the same grammatical word that is, or
> which contains, their supposed controller. If one adopts this view on
> articles, there is no agreement involved, because nominal categorization is
> expressed on the noun itself (periphrastically), not "repeated" on other
> lexical items/constituents to indicate belonging to the same syntactic unit
> (to use Walter's words).
>
> Surely, this depends on your view on articles and agreement. Other views
> on articles may lead to consider Movima (and probably other languages) as a
> counterexample to my tentative generalization. But I have a feeling that
> many, like myself, would not consider what is usually called an article to
> be target of what is usually called agreement. On the other hand, articles
> often have recent and transparent sources of grammaticalization (from
> demonstratives etc.) which would fit my definition of agreement; and where
> such demonstratives show flexible gender, they would be better
> counterexamples. As I do not expect that what happens to Movima articles
> happened to them _because_ they ceased to be demonstratives and started
> being articles, so these counterexamples are probably out there in the big
> world.
>
> Michael Daniel
>
>
>
> 2017-03-31 22:22 GMT+02:00 Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>:
>
>> The Movima system is surely a gender system, not only according to my
>> definition, but also according to Corbett's (1991) definition.
>>
>> It is gender according to my definition because it does not rely on a
>> notion of asymmetric "agreement". Recall that I said that a genifier system
>> is a system of markers which occur on nominal modifiers, on predicates or
>> on anaphoric pronouns, and each of which *reflects or contributes* a
>> property other than person or number. (And a gender system is a genifier
>> system that is not restricted to numeral modifiers and has at most 20
>> members.)
>>
>> It is gender according to Corbett's older definition because it is used
>> on anaphoric pronouns (where it seems to work much like English he/she/it,
>> which Corbett regards as gender forms).
>>
>> (The same goes for Roon, the Austronesian language mentioned by David
>> Gil.)
>>
>> Misha Daniel proposes to base the definition of gender on "agreement",
>> but he provides no definition of agreement. Stereotypically (and
>> "canonically"), agreement reflects properties of a noun, but what do we do
>> if a marker contributes information to a noun, and if this happens
>> commonly? The notion of "agreement" does not seem to help here. Moreover,
>> people often seem to think that numeral classifiers are evidently not
>> agreement markers, but as Walter Bisang pointed out, Thai-style numeral
>> classifiers are not that different from stereotypical agreement, and
>> neither are Kilivila classifiers (as noted by Grev Corbett and Sebastian
>> Fedden).
>>
>> Best,
>> Martin
>>
>>
>> On 31.03.17 11:16, khaude at uni-koeln.de wrote:
>>
>>> Dear colleagues,
>>>
>>> In Movima (isolate, South-West Amazon), referential elements (i.e.
>>> determiners/articles and pronouns) differentiate between human male, human
>>> female, non-human, and plural referents. Inanimate ("neuter") referential
>>> elements, when used with a human noun, indicate non-specific or derogatory
>>> reference. So for sex-neutral human nouns like *dichiye* 'child', we get:
>>>
>>> m. kus dichiye 'the/a boy'
>>> f. kinos dichiye 'the/a girl'
>>> pl. kis dichiye '(the) children'
>>> n. kos dichiye 'some child (nonspecific); that child (derogatory)'
>>>
>>> With nouns that imply sex, the alternatives are of course limited - e.g.
>>> *itilakwa* 'man' cannot be combined with a 'fem.' referential element.
>>> Still, they can be combined with a neutral element (if referring to an
>>> animal or with the above-mentioned effects for humans: kos itilakwa = 'the
>>> male (animal); some man; that man - derogatory'), which shows that the
>>> choice of the referential element does not depend on the noun, but on the
>>> referent.
>>>
>>> So this is not agreement, and not even gender (although I labelled it
>>> gender in Haude 2006). I am wondering now whether this system shouldn't, in
>>> fact, rather be considered a case of classification ...
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Katharina
>>>
>>> Haude, Katharina. 2006. A Grammar of Movima. Doctoral diss., Radboud
>>> University Nijmegen. http://webdoc.ubn.ru.nl/mono/h/haude_k/gramofmo.pdf
>>>
>>>
>>> Quoting Johanna NICHOLS <johanna at berkeley.edu>:
>>>
>>> I'd be inclined to call that a kind of derivation (or conversion), highly
>>>> productive for some languages and lexically restricted for others.  Much
>>>> like what produces Spanish manzana (F) 'apple (fruit)' vs. manzano (M)
>>>> 'apple (tree)', except more widespread in the lexicon.
>>>>
>>>> Johanna
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 9:39 AM, <dlpayne at uoregon.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Another language of essentially the “referentially-based” type that
>>>>> David
>>>>> Gil describes is Maa (Maasai):
>>>>>
>>>>> Payne, Doris L. 1998.   Maasai gender in typological perspective.
>>>>> *Studies
>>>>> in African Linguistics* 27.159-175.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    - Doris Payne
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> *From:* David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>
>>>>> *Sent:* ‎Thursday‎, ‎March‎ ‎30‎, ‎2017 ‎9‎:‎32‎ ‎AM
>>>>> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>>
>>>>> Dear all,
>>>>>
>>>>> Misha writes:
>>>>> > I am unaware of any language that has a reference-based
>>>>> > (overwhelmingly non-rigid) noun categorization device used for what
>>>>> is
>>>>> > an obvious typological instance of agreement. If you are aware of
>>>>> such
>>>>> > example, it would be interesting to know more about it. On the other
>>>>> > hand, Walter's message indicates that there are consistently rigid
>>>>> > systems that are not used for agreement - his Thai example.
>>>>> As a possible example of a "language that has a reference-based
>>>>> (overwhelmingly non-rigid) noun categorization device used for what is
>>>>> an obvious typological instance of agreement", I offer Roon, a language
>>>>> of the South Halmahera West New Guinea subgroup of Austronesian, spoken
>>>>> off the northern coast of western New Guinea. (I believe the facts in
>>>>> closely related Biak, for which there are two recent reference
>>>>> grammars,
>>>>> are similar in the relevant respects.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Roon has two genders, animate (encompassing humans, animals and plants)
>>>>> and inanimate. (Gender is only marked in 3rd person, leading me to
>>>>> wonder whether it can be collapsed with person into a single
>>>>> higher-level feature, though Grev Corbett has tried to talk me out of
>>>>> that!)  Agreement is straightforward: verbs agree with their subjects,
>>>>> and most nominal attributes agree with their head nouns, with respect
>>>>> to
>>>>> person, number and also gender (animate/inanimate). The agreement
>>>>> markers are prefixal, sometimes involving metathesis with the first
>>>>> segment of the root of the host agreement target.
>>>>>
>>>>> What's less clear is whether this is a *reference-based*
>>>>> noun-categorization device.  Against its characterization as such are a
>>>>> *very* small set of lexical items, including for example the words for
>>>>> 'coffee' and 'money' that are grammatically animate even though they
>>>>>
>>>>> are semantically inanimate.  On the other hand, many, perhaps most
>>>>> words, are flexible, and can belong to either class (animate or
>>>>> inanimate) with largely predictable semantic effects. Most commonly,
>>>>> the
>>>>> animate form refers to the animal/plant as a whole, while the inanimate
>>>>> form refers to either part of the animal/plant, or a substance or
>>>>> foodstuff made out of it.  For example, one word means 'pig' when
>>>>> animate and 'pork' when inanimate, similarly another word means
>>>>> 'coconut
>>>>> tree' when animate and 'coconut (fruit)' when inanimate.  (I must admit
>>>>> I haven't checked what happens with human referents, but given that
>>>>> they
>>>>> were still cooking the occasional missionary in the mid-1800s, I
>>>>> suspect
>>>>> I know the answer.)
>>>>>
>>>>> So does this count as "reference-based"?
>>>>>
>>>>> David
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> David Gil
>>>>>
>>>>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>>>>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>>>>> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>>>>>
>>>>> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
>>>>> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834 <+49%203641%20686834>
>>>>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816 <+62%20812-8116-2816>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>> Quoting Johanna NICHOLS <johanna at berkeley.edu>:
>>>
>>> I'd be inclined to call that a kind of derivation (or conversion), highly
>>>> productive for some languages and lexically restricted for others.  Much
>>>> like what produces Spanish manzana (F) 'apple (fruit)' vs. manzano (M)
>>>> 'apple (tree)', except more widespread in the lexicon.
>>>>
>>>> Johanna
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Mar 30, 2017 at 9:39 AM, <dlpayne at uoregon.edu> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Another language of essentially the “referentially-based” type that
>>>>> David
>>>>> Gil describes is Maa (Maasai):
>>>>>
>>>>> Payne, Doris L. 1998.   Maasai gender in typological perspective.
>>>>> *Studies
>>>>> in African Linguistics* 27.159-175.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    - Doris Payne
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> *From:* David Gil <gil at shh.mpg.de>
>>>>> *Sent:* ‎Thursday‎, ‎March‎ ‎30‎, ‎2017 ‎9‎:‎32‎ ‎AM
>>>>> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>>
>>>>> Dear all,
>>>>>
>>>>> Misha writes:
>>>>> > I am unaware of any language that has a reference-based
>>>>> > (overwhelmingly non-rigid) noun categorization device used for what
>>>>> is
>>>>> > an obvious typological instance of agreement. If you are aware of
>>>>> such
>>>>> > example, it would be interesting to know more about it. On the other
>>>>> > hand, Walter's message indicates that there are consistently rigid
>>>>> > systems that are not used for agreement - his Thai example.
>>>>> As a possible example of a "language that has a reference-based
>>>>> (overwhelmingly non-rigid) noun categorization device used for what is
>>>>> an obvious typological instance of agreement", I offer Roon, a language
>>>>> of the South Halmahera West New Guinea subgroup of Austronesian, spoken
>>>>> off the northern coast of western New Guinea. (I believe the facts in
>>>>> closely related Biak, for which there are two recent reference
>>>>> grammars,
>>>>> are similar in the relevant respects.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Roon has two genders, animate (encompassing humans, animals and plants)
>>>>> and inanimate. (Gender is only marked in 3rd person, leading me to
>>>>> wonder whether it can be collapsed with person into a single
>>>>> higher-level feature, though Grev Corbett has tried to talk me out of
>>>>> that!)  Agreement is straightforward: verbs agree with their subjects,
>>>>> and most nominal attributes agree with their head nouns, with respect
>>>>> to
>>>>> person, number and also gender (animate/inanimate). The agreement
>>>>> markers are prefixal, sometimes involving metathesis with the first
>>>>> segment of the root of the host agreement target.
>>>>>
>>>>> What's less clear is whether this is a *reference-based*
>>>>> noun-categorization device.  Against its characterization as such are a
>>>>> *very* small set of lexical items, including for example the words for
>>>>> 'coffee' and 'money' that are grammatically inanimate even though they
>>>>> are semantically inanimate.  On the other hand, many, perhaps most
>>>>> words, are flexible, and can belong to either class (animate or
>>>>> inanimate) with largely predictable semantic effects. Most commonly,
>>>>> the
>>>>> animate form refers to the animal/plant as a whole, while the inanimate
>>>>> form refers to either part of the animal/plant, or a substance or
>>>>> foodstuff made out of it.  For example, one word means 'pig' when
>>>>> animate and 'pork' when inanimate, similarly another word means
>>>>> 'coconut
>>>>> tree' when animate and 'coconut (fruit)' when inanimate.  (I must admit
>>>>> I haven't checked what happens with human referents, but given that
>>>>> they
>>>>> were still cooking the occasional missionary in the mid-1800s, I
>>>>> suspect
>>>>> I know the answer.)
>>>>>
>>>>> So does this count as "reference-based"?
>>>>>
>>>>> David
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> David Gil
>>>>>
>>>>> Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
>>>>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>>>>> Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
>>>>>
>>>>> Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
>>>>> Office Phone (Germany): +49-3641686834 <+49%203641%20686834>
>>>>> Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81281162816 <+62%20812-8116-2816>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Martin Haspelmath (haspelmath at shh.mpg.de)
>> Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
>> Kahlaische Strasse 10
>> D-07745 Jena
>> &
>> Leipzig University
>> IPF 141199
>> Nikolaistrasse 6-10
>> D-04109 Leipzig
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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