[Lingtyp] genifiers (gender markers/classifiers)

Wed Mar 22 02:42:35 UTC 2017

Hi All,
Thanks to Sebastian, Walter, and Mark for bringing up important points. I also feel there are structural and functional differences between genders and “noun classifiers”. I put the latter in scare quotes because it is as Mark said, they aren’t really classifying the noun, but are specifying the referent of the noun, and so the same noun can take different classifiers in many cases depending on the referent involved. In some uses they are actually referential themselves, and so can also be modified in some languages.

But my main reason for writing is to mention that this discussion is relevant to our discussion last year about classification in typology and language description.

Whenever we make a higher abstraction we are moving one more step away from the facts of the languages. The terms “gender” and “noun classifier” are already abstractions across a range of different phenomena, and so there is some loss of information about the diversity of forms when we use such terms, and if we then make a categorial merger of these two forms, as suggested, we then lose even more information. It may be that some typologists find this useful, and are willing to pay this price to be able to make grand generalisations, but the loss of information must be kept in mind, and there is also the danger that this usage filters back into descriptions of languages. We already have the case of the introduction of “converb”, which was a categorial merger of different types of non-finite verb constructions that may have been useful for some people, but what happened is that some people doing descriptions of languages now feel it is enough to say something is a converb construction without going into the details of what sort of converb it is. So we have a loss of information in the descriptions as well.

As a number of people said, it may be we don’t have enough terminology in linguistics, but for me it is a lack of terms for doing fine-grained analysis of actual linguistic structures, not a lack of terms for high level abstractions that obscure the diversity of actual structures.

If one wants to talk about these types together, I recommend keeping something like “noun classification devices” (even though as I said they aren’t necessarily classifying the noun, but the referent) because it is transparent and also has the plural marker, keeping us aware that we are talking about a plurality of devices and not one single type. The fact that it is not short and catchy will also help prevent the problem of it being used as a descriptive label.

Randy
-----
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On 22 Mar 2017, at 7:25 AM, Mark W. Post <markwpost at gmail.com<mailto:markwpost at gmail.com>> wrote:

Martin/All -

As others have already pointed out, there are two related issues here, one terminological and the other typological. I consider the terminological issue pretty trivial - I certainly agree that we have less terminology than we need for the number of concepts that we want to talk about in a more-or-less contrastive way, and while I'm willing to bet that even those of us who share this view probably blanched (at least initially) at the sight of the term "genifier", at the end of the day it doesn't matter - "grammaticalization" has more suffixes than it needs, and if you unpack them all they don't actually add up to what we use the term to mean, but the world keeps turning regardless.

But I'd take issue with the motivation for a categorical merger in the first place (which is what I take the introduction of a superordinate label to amount to - if that's wrong, then I've misunderstood something). It seems to me that most of the literature on classifiers focuses on the semantic dimension of classification, probably because this is what stands out as exotic from a European perspective - and, indeed, the label "classifier" itself suggests this. And it's the semantic dimension that is mostly being focused on when an alignment between gender systems and classifier systems is proposed - even, and especially, when superordinate labels like "noun classification" are proposed. But this is only part of the story. The *function* of classifiers - and here, I *only* mean the "numeral classifiers" of Greater Mainland Southeast Asia - is not classification, but referential specification. They function, that is, to individuate entities as instances of types. That is why the most frequently-used classifier by far in Mandarin Chinese, for example, is (almost) semantically empty, and cliticizes to demonstratives and the numeral 'one' in most mentions. Other languages take matters further, by deputizing the generic classifier itself as a de facto indefinite article - consider, for example, Nuoso Yi (data from Liu and Gu 2011 DOI: 10.1075/tsl.96.11liu<http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/tsl.96.11liu> - apologies if the glosses don't align properly).

i33ti34  gu33    ʑo33       si44        la33 .
coat       CL        catch       take        come
‘Bring a coat (to me).’

Hence the frequent observation that languages with classifiers tend to lack articles (though it's true that they don't always).

Given these facts, it seems that there's an at least equal argument in favor of merging classifiers with other referential markers, and in particular articles, so: clarticles? classicles? artifiers? Hmmm...

It seems to me that what we're really talking about here is the same thing that we usually talk about, which is that there are no cross-linguistically watertight categories, but we want to do typology anyway, so what do we do? We can select a semantic parameter (a "comparative concept") in terms of which categories may be similar across languages, but they will differ in other respects. If we focus on those other respects, we can end up with a different typology. It may be that the real difficulty here is that our traditional category-labels, and the categories they are designed to capture, are multi-dimensional.

Mark

On 22/03/2017 8:34 AM, Sebastian Nordhoff wrote:

And the term “gen-ifier” is completely parallel to “class-ifier” – it’s
a marker that puts a noun in a genus.

if "genifier" is used to put a noun in a *genus*, it is out as a marker
for the superordinate concept encompassing both noun class and gender.
Best
Sebastian

(Actually, since English distinguishes between “gender” and “genus”, one
might even introduce “genus” as a new feature term, a cover term for
gender and classifierhood. That would certainly be found more acceptable
to neophobics than "clender".)

Martin

On 21.03.17 20:38, Sebastian Nordhoff wrote:

Dear all,
as someone who has not worked extensively on either of these concepts, I
still have to say that the term "genifier" strikes me as odd. My first
thought upon seeing the subject of the mail was "OK, this will be about
making something a gender, or a gene, or a knee-like thing maybe, let's
see". I was misled by terms such as "intensifier", used to make
something more intense, and certainly also, albeit more on phonological
grounds, by "gentrification", which is a widely debated topic where I
live.

The attempt to blend "GEnder" and "classiFIER" is not successful in my
view, as "-fier" is not really the important formative here; "class" is.

If there is a desire for a blend, I would rather go for "Clender" or
"Clander", which would not lead to misparsings/misinterpretations as the
one I had.

As a final note, a "classifier" does something to an X, while "gender"
is a property of an X.

(1)  /ladida/ is of gender X
(2) ?/ladida/ is of classifier X
(3) ?/-dada/ is a gender
(4)  /-dada/ is a classifier

It is unclear to me whether the two concepts "gender" and "classifier"
do actually have a superordinate concept. Possibly, one has to use
"gender marker" and "classifier", or "noun class" and "gender" as
subordinate concepts to arrive at a good superordinate concept.

Best wishes
Sebastian

On 03/20/2017 04:05 PM, Martin Haspelmath wrote:

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.

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