[Lingtyp] genifiers (gender markers/classifiers)

[Martin Haspelmath]

Dear typologists,

Cross-linguistic terminology (comparative concepts) should be both clear 
and conform to the tradition, in order to preserve continuity with the 
older literature.

In the case of the terms "gender" and "classifier", it seems that these 
two goals cannot be achieved simultaneously without coining a new term 
("genifier").

There is quite a bit of general literature on gender/classifiers (e.g. 
Dixon 1986; Grinevald 2000; Aikhenvald 2000; Seifart 2010; Corbett & 
Fedden 2016), but none of these works provide clear definitions of these 
terms, and the more recent literature (e.g. Corbett & Fedden, and also 
Seifart & Payne 2007) actually emphasizes that there is no reason to say 
that gender markers and classifiers are distinct phenomena in the 
world's languages.

Thus, it seems to me that we need the new term "genifier", perhaps 
defined as follows:

A *genifier system* is a system of grammatical markers which occur on 
nominal modifiers, predicates or anaphoric pronouns, and each of which 
expresses (i.e. normally reflects, but sometimes contributes) a broad 
property other than person and number of the controlling noun (i.e. for 
nominal modifiers: the modificatum, for predicates: an argument, for 
anaphoric pronouns: the antecedent).

The alternative to coining a new term, it seems to me, would be to 
extend the meaning of the term "gender" or of the term "classifier" in 
such a way that there would be no more continuity with the earlier 
literature.

Given the above definition of genifier, we can perhaps define "gender" 
and "numeral classifier" as follows (as arbitrary subcategories of 
genifiers, defined just to preserve continuity with the older literature):

A *gender system* (= a system of gender markers) is a system of 
genifiers which includes no more than 20 genifiers and which is not 
restricted to numeral modifiers.

A *numeral classifier system* is a system of genifiers which is 
restricted to numeral (plus optionally other adnominal) modifiers.

I wonder if the above definitions have any obvious defects, i.e. any 
cases that everyone would call gender or numeral classifier and that 
wouldn't fall under the definitions, or cases that fall under them and 
that nobody would call gender or numeral classifier.

Note that the new term "genifier" also has the advantage that the whole 
domain can be called *genification* (rather than the cumbersome "noun 
classification/nominal classification", which is also vague because 
there are all kinds of "classes" or "classifications" of nouns which 
have nothing to do with genifiers).

Any comments?

Thanks,
Martin

*************************

References

Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. 2000. /Classifiers: A typology of noun 
categorization devices/. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Corbett, Greville G. & Sebastian Fedden. 2016. Canonical gender. 
/Journal of Linguistics/ 52(3). 495--531.
Dixon, R. M. W. 1986. Noun classes and noun classification in 
typological perspective. In Colette Grinevald Craig (ed.), /Noun classes 
and categorization/, 105--112. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Grinevald, Colette G. 2000. A morphosyntactic typology of classifiers. 
In Gunter Senft (ed.), /Systems of nominal classification/, 50--92. 
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Seifart, Frank. 2010. Nominal classification. /Language and Linguistics 
Compass/ 4(8). 719--736.
Seifart, Frank & Doris L. Payne. 2007. Nominal classification in the 
North West Amazon: Issues in areal diffusion and typological 
characterization. /International Journal of American Linguistics/ 73(4). 
381--387.

-- 
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





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20170320/e81da472/attachment.htm>