37.391, Books: Noun Categorization: A Comprehensive Typology: Aikhenvald (2026)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-37-391. Wed Jan 28 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.391, Books: Noun Categorization: A Comprehensive Typology: Aikhenvald (2026)

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Date: 26-Jan-2026
From: Ulrich Lueders [contact at lincom.eu]
Subject: Noun Categorization: A Comprehensive Typology: Aikhenvald (2026)


Title: Noun Categorization: A Comprehensive Typology
Series Title: LINCOM Studies in Language Typology 35
Publication Year: 2026

Publisher: Lincom GmbH
           https://lincom-shop.eu/
Book URL:
https://lincom-shop.eu/epages/57709feb-b889-4707-b2ce-c666fc88085d.sf/en_GB/?ViewObjectPath=%2FShops%2F57709feb-b889-4707-b2ce-c666fc88085d%2FProducts%2F%22ISBN%209783969392591%22

Author(s): Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald

ISBN 9783969392591 (Hardbound). LINCOM Studies in Language Typology
35.698pp. 2026. 17x24 cm. Euro 220.

Abstract:

Almost all of the languages of the world have some noun categorization
devices in their grammar. The most widespread is linguistic genders —
grammatical classes of nouns based on core semantic properties such as
sex (female and male), animacy, humanness, and also shape and size.
Numeral classifiers categorise the noun referent in terms of its
inherent nature, animacy, shape and form, and occur with a number word
or a quantifier. Further types of noun categorization include noun
classifiers, possessive classifiers, verbal classifiers, and a number
of rarer types (locative and deictic classifiers). Noun categorization
devices cover a range of types from the large systems of numeral
classifiers in South-East Asia to the highly grammaticalised gender
agreement classes in Indo-European languages. Each type of noun
categorization device has its preferred semantic parameters. One can
develop from another. All of them provide a unique insight into how
people categorise the world through their language in terms of
universal semantic parameters involving humanness, animacy, sex,
shape, form, consistency, and functional properties. In one language,
a human will be classified in terms of orientation, as 'vertical', in
another as male or female, and in another one as simply animate, or
'rational'. In a number of languages, the same, or almost the same,
set of classifiers is used in multiple contexts — with number words,
with deictics, in possessive constructions, and so on. This points
towards the unity of noun categorization via classifiers. There is no
evidence for the synchoric primacy of any of the multiple contexts.
Diachronically, they may display distinct pathways of development, and
undergo language obsolescence at different rates.
        Gender and various types of classifiers share discourse
functions, and are never semantically redundant. Gender and
classifiers can refer anaphorically to a previously mentioned entity
and serve as referent-tracking devices. They change as the society
changes, reflecting the ways in which language and social environment
are integrated into a single whole. The meanings, the uses, the
acquisition, and dissolution of noun categorization offer a window
into into how the world is seen through language, revealing the
workings of the human mind and its cognitive capacities.

Linguistic Field(s): Typology

Written In: English (eng)



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