[Lingtyp] nominal classification (gender and classifiers)
Martin Haspelmath
haspelmath at shh.mpg.de
Fri Mar 31 20:22:36 UTC 2017
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
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