[systems-of-nominal-classification] Introduction: Ruth Singer

Mon Jul 14 23:23:29 UTC 2014

Oh, please don't apologise - this is most interesting. Thank you! I'm
afraid it's very late here, so I'll be brief. I'm cc:ing Ger and Michael as
well.

Indeed, I think you are right. Just for full information, these are the
languages with a  clear "yes" on F116:

Arammba [stk]
Anindilyakwa [aoi]

Gunwinggu [gup]

Imonda [imn]

Kilivila [kij]

Manam [mva]

Mian [mpt]

Sudest [tgo]

Telefol [tlf]
Tiwi [tiw]
Xaracuu [ane]

I'll see if I can help you with Chichewa and the algonquian languages, I
think I know some good people.

/Hedvig

2014-07-15 0:39 GMT+02:00 Ruth Singer <ruth.singer at gmail.com>:

> Hi Hedvig,
>
> Here is the list (now 14 languages). The survey was aimed at investigating
> lexicalised argreement - the lexicalisation of verbal gender agreement. I
> added the column on noun-incorporation just because it seems to be related
> to the development of lexicalised agreement in some language groups. But
> I was surprised how strong the correlation was between having a strongly
> semantically-based gender system and having noun-incorporation.
>
>
>   *Language*
>
> *Lexicalised agreement*
>
> *Arguments lexicalised*
>
> *Percentage of verbs involved*
>
> *Noun-incorporation*
>
> Alamblak (PNG, Sepik)
>
> N
>
> -
>
> -
>
> Y
>
> Barasano (Colombia, Tucanoan)
>
> N
>
> -
>
> -
>
> Y
>
> Burushaski (Pakistan, isolate)
>
> N
>
> -
>
> -
>
> N
>
> Chinantec languages (Mexico, Oto-Manguean)
>
> Y
>
> S, O
>
> -
>
> Y
>
> Ket
>
> (Russia, Yenseian)
>
> Y
>
> A, S, O
>
> -
>
> Y
>
> Manambu
>
> (PNG, Sepik)
>
> N
>
> -
>
> -
>
> N
>
> Mawng
>
> (Australia, Iwaidjan)
>
> Y
>
> A, S, O
>
> 20%
>
> N
>
> Ngan’gityemerri
>
> (Australia, Southern Daly)
>
> Y
>
> A
>
> small
>
> Y (body parts only)
>
> Ngarinyin
>
> (Australia, Wororan)
>
> N
>
> -
>
> -
>
> N
>
> Passamaquoddy-Maliseet
>
> (Canada, Algonquian)
>
> Y
>
>
>
> O, ?A, ?S
>
> 3%
>
> Y(not syntactic)
>
> Seneca
>
> (United States, Iroquoian)
>
> N
>
> -
>
> -
>
> Y
>
> Swahili (East Africa, Bantu)
>
> N
>
> -
>
> -
>
> N
>
> Tiwi
>
> (Australia, isolate)
>
> Y
>
> O
>
> small
>
> Y
>
> Tunica
>
> (United States, isolate)
>
> Y
>
> A, S?, O?
>
> -
>
> Y
>
> The way I came up with this sample is as follows:
> I started with the 53 languages that Corbett (2008) lists as having
> semantically-based gender assignment in WALS.
> I identified that 28 of these 53 languages had gender agreement in the
> verb through: published grammatical descriptions, Surrey morphology group
> databases available online and the Person Agreement Database available
> through the Typological Database System.
> I excluded languages whose gender systems have a strict semantic systems
> or only a weak semantic basis - i.e. if female and male humans were the
> main semantically-based distinction. This excluded most 2-gender systems.
>
> I wanted to find out about lexicalised agreement, which is rarely
> mentioned in grammatical descriptions so most of my information comes from
> responses to an email I sent to linguists who are experts in a particular
> language. So I ended up with information for 14 of the 28 langauges. No
> doubt this is biased in favour of a positive response - i.e. linguists were
> more likely to respond to my email if the description of lexicalised
> agreement that I gave in the email sounded like something that they were
> familiar with from the language they work on.
>
> I have listed below the 14 languages I did not get a response for - if
> anybody knows a helpful expert in one of the missing languages please let
> me know. There are just 3 questions in the survey so it should only take 5
> minutes. For a number of these languages I did get supportive emails in
> response - i.e. the linguists were keen to help but they didn't get around
> to responding to the survey for one reason or another.
>
> Archi
>
> Campa (Axininca)
>
> Chicheŵa (Niger-Congo)
>
> Cree (Plains)
>
> Diola-Fogny Atlantic, Niger-Congo. Spoken in Senegal and Gambia
>
> Hunzib
>
> Marind
>
> Maybrat
>
> Ojibwa (Eastern)
>
> Oneida
>
> Paumarí
>
> Taiap
>
> Tidore
>
> Wari'
>
> I have data for a number of other Australian languages but since these
> were not in Corbett's original 53 language sample I have excluded them, to
> try and make it a less biased sample, although of course it is rather
> opportunistic.
>
> Hedvig, I think what I am investigating is sort of orthogonal to your
> questionnaire question:
> F116 Do verbs classify the shape, size, consistency or position of
> absolutive arguments by means of incorporated nouns, verbal affixes or
> suppletive verb stems?
>
> The languages with noun-incorporation that I am more familiar with -
> Australian languages - mostly would code 'no' to this question. They
> incorporate generic nouns which are not the kind of classifiers mentioned
> in the question. Anindilyakwa is an exception but the other Australian
> languages I am familiar with incorporate generic nouns with meanings such
> as 'tree', 'vegetable food' etc. A question which was added when we coded
> the Australian data for the Sahul work is:
>
> Is plant status a relevant category in the noun class/gender system?
>
> This would probably pick out many Australian language nominal
> classification systems but wouldn't include the noun-incorporation
> classifiers. In any case, the categories each Australian language uses are
> not completely commensurable.
>
> Apologies for the long email!
>
> Ruth
>
> On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 2:14 AM, Hedvig Skirgård <hedvig.skirgard
> @gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Ruth and everyone,
>>
>> I just had a quick question, which are these 13 languages?
>>
>> In the questionnaire we are using in the Nijmegen Typological Survey
>> there is a question that was also applied in the Sahul and Melansia-sample
>> in publications by Michael Dunn, Ger Reesink, yourself et al.
>>
>> F116 Do verbs classify the shape, size, consistency or position of
>> absolutive arguments by means of incorporated nouns, verbal affixes or
>> suppletive verb stems?
>>
>> Out of the 176 languages that were answered for that questions 165 are
>> coded as "no", 18 as "?" and 11 as  "yes". The questions is not limited to
>> the more specific questions of yours, but I was just curious about the
>> specific languages.
>>
>> I'm not that surprised by what you describe, but perhaps I would be if I
>> had more experience. Isn't it expected from what we know of
>> grammaticalization paths of systems of nominal classification? Again,
>> please excuse my ignorance concerning the specifics of noun incorporation
>> in Australian languages.
>>
>> /Hedvig
>>
>>
>> 2014-07-14 1:47 GMT+02:00 Ruth Singer <ruth.singer at gmail.com>:
>>
>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne (Australia). I
>>> have been interested in nominal classification since I began my PhD in
>>> 2002. That was a description of a few topics in the Mawng language, a
>>> non-Pama Nyungan language spoken in northern Australia. Mawng which has
>>> what is morphologically a straightforward semantically-based five gender
>>> system but the uses of the system is more similar to those described for
>>> nominal classifiers in other Australian languages - both those in NP
>>> classifier constructions and those that are analysed as incorporated nouns
>>> in verbs. In my PhD I looked at how verbal gender agreement is involved in
>>> the negotiation of meaning in discourse - how it interacts with the
>>> meanings of verbs and the discourse context. And also how gender agreement
>>> in verbs becomes lexicalised and what this says about its more productive
>>> functions.
>>>
>>> Officially I am working on projects that look at sociolinguistics and
>>> multilingualism at present but also intonation. But I have been revising a
>>> book manuscript that develops some of the ideas in my PhD called The
>>> dynamics of nominal classification: productive and lexicalised uses of
>>> gender agreement in Mawng. It includes a rather small typological
>>> survey which surprisingly suggests that there is a correlation between a
>>> language having verbal gender agreement for 3 or more strongly
>>> semantically-based genders and having noun-incorporation into verbs. In
>>> other words, if a language has one form of nominal classification it is
>>> more likely to also have another form. Does this surprise the rest of you?
>>> Maybe I am just hung up on old-fashioned typological ideas of
>>> complementarity - i.e. if a language has feature X it has no need of
>>> feature Y. The survey only included 13 languages, because it was actually
>>> designed to look at another feature, and I since I did it by
>>> contactinglinguists I didn't know by email I didn't get a lot of responses.
>>>
>>> Look forward to many interesting discussions!
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Ruth
>>>
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>

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