[Lingtyp] genifiers (gender markers/classifiers)

Tue Mar 21 11:06:04 UTC 2017

Dear all,

Just a small comment about the blend nature of “genifier”. What is said about English blends seems to be overstated. If we take “brunch”, we can say that it is a breakfast that is a lunch or a lunch that is a breakfast. The order of elements is not relevant since it is dictated by phonology. Even in the case of “smog”, it can be argued that it is a mix of smog and fog (cf. the definition of the online New Oxford American Dictionary: "fog or haze combined with smoke and other atmospheric pollutants”). In addition, many English blends involved elements which are not nouns (adjectives, verbs). In conclusion, the argument against choosing a denomination that is a blend instead of an abbreviation is rather weak. All options are open.

Best wishes,

Bernard Fradin

> Le 20 mars 2017 à 23:23, Bernhard Waelchli <bernhard at LING.SU.SE> a écrit :
> 
> Dear all,
>  
> ”Genifier” is a blend. English blends seem mostly to denote subordinate-level rather than superordinate level concepts. “Smog” is a kind of smoky fog. Thus, “genifier” would be appropriate for a particularly gendery classifier. What about using an abbreviation instead? We have TAM, TMA and TAME and some people use PNG for person-number-gender (there are actually excellent reasons why numeral classifiers are not included in PNG). Of course, abbreviations have their drawbacks. Also, tense, aspect, mood and evidentiality are functionally motivated terms unlike noun classes. Maybe we should rather use SAE for sex, animacy and evaluation instead of gender (as all grammatical categories have a semantic cores and more irregular language-specific peripheries, why not simply labelling all categories after their semantic cores). Of course, the abbreviation strategy will be problematic as we might want to add more categories, such as shape, size and honorifics (SAESSH ???). So why not just retaining the term gender?
>  
> Part of the problem lies in Hockett’s (1958: 231) classical definition: “Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words”, which makes us believe that agreement and noun classes are necessary conditions for gender. Maybe they are not. Why do we have to keep that definition for gender? But as long as we adhere to this definition, not so strange that we end up thinking that noun classifiers and noun classes are closely related. Things would be different if gender was defined as the grammatical expression of sex, animacy, evaluation and related categories, as TAME can be defined as grammatical expression of tense, aspect, mood and evidentiality.
>  
> Another problem is that noun classing is basically ambiguous. A) classifying/delimiting nominal notions as numeral classifiers do (but not necessarily classifying all nouns), and B) partitioning all lexemes of the major part of speech nouns into a small number of classes. Maybe we should rather speak of “noun partitioning” for B). Partitioning the lexemes of a major part of speech is not intrinsically connected to a certain kind of semantics. But it is perhaps not unnatural that the languages that do it do it often by making use of notions that matter for nouns, such as sex, animacy, size and shape. There is also verb partitioning (you might want to call it verb classes) comprising such disparate phenomena as ‘be/have’ auxiliaries in Romance and German languages, semantic alignment, volitionality as in Kathmandu Newari, etc. (all reflected in differences in auxiliaries or grammatical relations, related to  phenomena such as “unaccusativity/unergativity”, animacy, volitionality etc.). What noun and verb partitioning have in common is that they are complex, highly mature, system-forming phenomena, usually combining several grams and linking several levels of language structure (lexicon, syntax, morphology).
>  
> I cannot not see how “genifier” and “genification” can help us understand, for instance, why “class hotbeds and numeral classification hotbeds almost never overlap” (Nichols 1992:139). Then, it is actually the anaphoric use of gender which is most easily amenable to functional notions - and focusing on noun classing detracts us from the anaphoric use of gender. (There is, of course, also the agreement vs. index debate, which does not make things easier. But it is a debate for gender, not for numeral classifiers.)
>  
> Best wishes
> Bernhard
>  
> References:
>  
> Hockett, C. F. 1958. A Course in Modern Linguistics. New York: Macmillan.
> Nichols, Johanna. 1992. Linguistic Diversity in Space and Time. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
>> 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
>> 
> 
> -- 
> Bernhard Wälchli
> Stockholms universitet
> Institutionen för lingvistik
> SE - 106 91 Stockholm
> Tel +46 8 16 23 44 
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