[Lingtyp] nominal classification (gender and classifiers)

[Eitan Grossman]

Hi Misha and all,

In Amharic, there is a typical Afroasiatic gender system, i.e., a sex-based
m/f system. It is reflected in pronouns and in agreement. In general,
masculine gender is the default for nouns, while feminine gender is typical
of animate female referents.

However, unlike other Semitic languages, there is a certain fluidity to
gender assignment, such that masculine gender can indicate something that
is relatively big, and feminine gender something that is relatively small.
The examples given by our teacher were (a) that a car is (defaultly)
masculine gender or if in the context of bicycles, but could be feminine
gender in the context of trucks, and that (b) Addis Ababa was (defaultly)
masculine in the context of Ethiopian cities, but could be feminine in the
context of world capitals. I haven't seen this noted in grammars. However,
in their short grammar, Hudson and Teferra (2007) mention the use of
feminine gender in 'affectionate' contexts, such as for 'car' or 'country'
('car' and 'country' normally being masculine) if it one's own car or
country.

Pronouns also have a sex-based m/f distinction, but feminine forms can be
used for children, male or female, (b) between friends, whether male or
female, and (c) insultingly. These are mentioned in Hudson & Teferra's 2007
grammar.

In Modern Hebrew, there is also a sex-based m/f gender system, with some
sociolinguistically marked use of feminine pronouns and agreement between
male friends, and use of masculine pronouns and agreement by women, usually
young women talking in a 'cute' way. I don't think anyone has documented
these things.

Best,
Eitan



Eitan Grossman
Lecturer, Department of Linguistics/School of Language Sciences
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tel: +972 2 588 3809
Fax: +972 2 588 1224

On Sat, Apr 1, 2017 at 2:17 PM, Michael Daniel <misha.daniel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Lingtyp mailing list
>>> Lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
>>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/mailman/listinfo/lingtyp
>>>
>>
>>
>
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