[Lingtyp] nominal classification (gender and classifiers)

Mon Mar 27 07:30:13 UTC 2017

Eva Lindström wrote:
> I think class  and classifier should be kept distinct. This is because 
> they refer to different things (as was pointed out early in this thread):
> - Class (as in gender or noun class) is a property of a lexeme, 
> involving sub-categorisation of the noun category in the lexicon;
> - Classifiers deal with properties of (groups of) referents.

This is similar to the point made by Greville Corbett & Sebastian 
Fedden: Typical gender has rigid choice of markers (or values), while 
flexible marker choice is associated with "classifiers".

But if we make this part of a definition, then we end up saying that the 
distinction between English "he" and "she" is a classifier distinction 
(because they classify referents, not nouns), which would be very confusing.

We also don't want to say that rigid choice/assignment implies "gender", 
as pointed out by Walter Bisang:

> This would mean that Thai has a canonical gender system and that an 
> example like the following (see my previous message) is similar to 
> Swahili:
>
>
> rót  [khan  yàj]  [khan  níi]
>
> car  CL       big     CL       DEM
>
> 'this big car'
>

At the same time, we want to use the terms "gender" and "numeral 
classifier" in a sense that is very close to everyone's intuitions. We 
want to continue making comments like the following (from Corbett & 
Fedden's message):

> there are tiny classifier systems and large gender systems.
>

We need definitions of these terms of we want to find out whether these 
claims are true. Can these definitions contain numbers? Corbett & Fedden 
think not:

> Biologists don't say that legs must come in twos or fours, and bar 
> millipedes from having legs because they have too many. Linguists 
> allow for large tense systems and small consonant inventories.
>

Yes, because we have definitions of "tense" and "consonant" that are 
independent of the numbers. But economists define SMEs with arbitrary 
numbers, so linguists might do so as well.

Guillaume Segerer is worried that this might be reflected in the 
practice of language describers:
>
> In France, when companies grow, they tend to split into smaller 
> entities to avoid such constraints. Here the arbitrary threshold 
> influences the observed reality. Along this line, the risk would be 
> that "typologically-oriented" descriptions might be influenced by the 
> arbitrary threshold posited by typologists.
>

But this is a discussion on LINGTYP, where we are talking about language 
typology. Language description is a different matter -- descriptive 
linguists need a separate set of descriptive categories from the 
typologists' comparative concepts.

One could of course give up the goal of uniform terminology across the 
discipline, as hinted by David Beck earlier:

> the key to terminological clarity is being clear about your terms at 
> point of use. I can see this being a useful term in many contexts, but 
> I don't see this as being a one-size-fits-all kind of thing that 
> everyone can take up in every circumstance for something as messy and 
> variable as classificatory categories.
>

But this makes it very hard to communicate, and very hard for newcomers 
to enter the discipline. Moreover, many concepts are built on other 
concepts (like my proposed gender concept, built on the genifier 
concept, which itself has a longish definition). There are at least some 
basic concepts that everyone needs to agree on for the discipline to be 
able to function and yield nonsubjective results.

Best,
Martin

On 24 Mar 2017, at 08:36, Martin Haspelmath <haspelmath at shh.mpg.de 
<mailto:haspelmath at shh.mpg.de>> wrote:
>>
>> On 23.03.17 19:21, Alan Rumsey wrote:
>>>
>>> Those of us who have worked on languages with 2-5 such classes (in 
>>> my case Ungarinyin) have sometimes called them 'genders', while 
>>> those who have worked on languages with more have called them 'noun 
>>> classes'.
>>>
>>
>> I had presupposed in my earlier messages that there is no distinction 
>> between these two types, and that they should be called "genders" -- 
>> I took this as established by Corbett (1991). As Johanna Nichols 
>> noted, the term "noun class" is vague, so for cross-linguistic 
>> purposes, "gender" is surely better.
>>
>> (One might feel that neglecting the sex-based vs. non-sex-based 
>> distinction is not such a good idea, as in Bernhard Wälchli's 
>> message, but it seems to me that one really shouldn't use the term 
>> "gender" anymore for sex-based distinctions, at least in typology. I 
>> take Corbett (1991) as foundational for all of us.)
>>
>> But the problems with Corbett (1991) are
>>
>> -- that his definition of gender is based on the notion of 
>> "agreement" (for which there is no clear definition, cf. Corbett 
>> (2006), who only provides a definition of canonical agreement)
>>
>> -- that the distinction between "gender" and "numeral classifier" is 
>> (in part) based on the idea that gender markers are affixes and 
>> numeral classifiers are free forms, but there is no clear definition 
>> of "affix" (there is a definition of "free form", as occurring on its 
>> own in a complete utterance -- and numeral classifiers are surely 
>> bound by this criterion)
>>
>> -- that the distinction between "features" (like gender) and markers 
>> (like classifiers) is far from clear-cut
>>
>> Moreover, Corbett himself has given up the distinction between gender 
>> and other classifiers (there's only a canonical definition of gender 
>> now), as have others such as Ruth Singer, Sasha Aikhenvald, and Frank 
>> Seifart. But I still want to talk about "gender" as a comparative 
>> concept (as well as about "numeral classifiers" -- a student of mine 
>> just wrote a nice MA thesis about this topic).
>>
>> Guillaume Segerer points out that some Atlantic languages have up to 
>> 31 classes, and it would seem odd to exclude them from having gender 
>> on the basis of a definition that arbitrarily stops at 20. I agree 
>> that this would seem odd, but I need to point out that *it wouldn't 
>> matter*. Comparative concepts are not designed to give the same 
>> results in all cases that seem similar enough to us (or some of us), 
>> but *to allow rigorous, intersubjective cross-linguistic comparison*. 
>> Comparative concepts must sometimes be arbitrary, because the world 
>> consists of many continuities, and if we still want to discuss 
>> differences with words, we need to make arbitrary cuts (think of the 
>> importance of SMEs in economics -- small and medium-size enterprises, 
>> defined arbitrarily as having fewer than 250 employees).
>>
>> Maybe it will turn out that some other, less arbitrary concept will 
>> give even better cross-linguistic generalizations. But for the time 
>> being, we have the term "gender" as a comparative concept (especially 
>> in legacy works such as Corbett's WALS maps), and my definition ("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") seems to be the only definitional 
>> proposal currently available.
>>
>> Best wishes,
>> Martin

-- 
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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