Search Results

This chapter reanalyses noun classification in the Australian language Dyirbal. While earlier analyses have proposed intricate class assignment principles rooted in conceptual features, we argue that Dyirbal noun classification is sensitive to salient phonological cues and a small core of cross‐linguistically common semantic cues in keeping with other familiar noun classification systems.

Personal pronouns and proper names are inherently grounded. The structure of other nominals tends to reflect semantic function, with the head noun as core, grounding as the outermost layer, and modifiers in between. Noun modification is varied both semantically and in its structural implementation. When nominal and relational expressions combine grammatically, there is often a discrepancy between the nominal expression's profile and the entity which participates most directly in the relationship—its active zone with respect to that relationship. Noun classes have varying degrees of semantic motivation. Distributional classes, defined by participation in particular patterns, may be semantically arbitrary. While gender-type classes have semantic prototypes, the class as a whole is defined by a consistent set of grammatical behaviors. In a usage based approach, such classes are characterized by families of constructional schemas. Noun classifiers likewise have prototypical values semantically extended to a range of other cases. They represent a distinct kind of nominal structure in which the classifier functions as a schematic head noun. Classifiers are related to quantifier constructions allowing the unitization of a mass. Nouns bear various kinds of grammatical markings. Most intrinsic to nouns are elements deriving them from other classes. There is no sharp distinction between such derivation and noun inflection. Markings of gender and number are intermediate. More extrinsic are markings indicating a nominal's role in higher-level grammatical constructions. These are meaningful in a symbolic account of grammar. Such an account accommodates both agreement—the multiple realization of semantic specifications—and cases where multiple specifications are realized by a single, unanalyzable form. Analyzability is a matter of degree.

This chapter looks at noun class and gender systems that are somehow relevant for the proper expression (morphology, syntax, phonology) of noun phrases (NPs) and sentences. The reflection of real and apparent nominal subclasses outside or inside the noun phrase is discussed, along with certain correlations between nouns or referents of NPs on the one hand and constituents outside the NP such as relators (adpositions, case affixes) and the main predicate on the other. Examples are given to show how noun class determines the form of a constituent. Examples from MalakMalak (Australian) illustrate that noun class can also determine the order of constituents. In this language, inalienable nouns (that is, nouns which always require reference to a possessing entity) must follow, whereas alienably possessed nouns must precede, the possessor noun.

This chapter considers data that are problematic for the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) model. These include: Arabic determiners in codeswitching; ‘do’ verb (light verbs) constructions; and Embedded Language (EL) islands. The Uniform Structure Principle and Generalized Lexical Knowledge are also discussed, specifically in relation to bare forms and Bantu noun classes.

A noun may refer to a man, a woman, an animal or an inanimate object of varied shape, size and function. A grammatical device can reflect the nature of a noun referent. • Small gender systems—typically, masculine and feminine—are realized through agreement on an adjective or a verb. • Numeral classifiers occur with numerals and quantifiers. • Possessive classifiers occur in possessive constructions. Or the same set of forms may appear in all these contexts, creating a ‘multiple’ classifier system. The existence of languages with ‘multiple’ classifiers in many contexts points towards an intrinsic unity of noun categorisation as a linguistic phenomenon. Various means of classifying nouns mirror the ways speakers view the world they live in. And if languages are in contact, they are likely to share the meanings and the means of noun classification. Amazonian languages are particularly rich in noun categorization devices. Over half the languages have genders which are typically inherited from the proto-language. Numeral and other classifier types are less frequent, and tend to cluster in compact areas. Many Amazonian languages of Arawak, Tucanoan, Witotoan and Guahibo families use the same set of classifiers in various contexts. Such multiple classifier systems are rare in the world.

This chapter deals with secrecy and presents case studies of how secret languages are created, used, and revealed among the Jukun (Nigeria), Lango and Adhola (Uganda), and Fulbe (West Africa), and in the New World. A case study of initiation language in Senegal further illustrates how secret languages are created on the base of linguistic knowledge.

This chapter addresses simplification and complexification in the morphology and morphosyntax of Wolof noun classes. Simplification, compared with its closest Atlantic cognates, is well known to have occurred in Wolof as a whole, ever since its earliest attestations. In addition, urban Wolof further simplifies noun classes which is partly due to the particular dynamics of linguistic prestige in the Wolophone community. What went unnoticed until recently is that at the same time also complexification took place locally in some spots of the grammatical system, with the rise of morphological irregularity (overabundance) in some noun paradigms and of defectiveness and other irregularities, for some noun classes, in the paradigm of the indefinite article.

Many languages of the world have a gender system in their grammar. There are two genders in French, three in German, four in Dyirbal (from North Queensland), more elsewhere. We seldom find an exact correspondence between masculine/feminine and male/female sex. In German most nouns referring to females are feminine but Mädchen ‘girl’ is in neuter gender (because it contains the diminutive suffix -chen which is always neuter). Gender choice (or assignment) can be more or less semantically transparent or opaque. There is always some semantic basis to Linguistic Gender choice but languages vary as to how much semantic choice there is. Gender assignment can also involve morphological and phonological features of nouns. Gender may be distinguished in personal pronouns only, as in English, or through derivational affixes (as in many Uralic languages). This chapter focuses on a cross-linguistic typology of gender, its meanings, and its expression.

The purpose of this brief chapter is to clarify the typological definition of gender as a prelude to the cross-linguistic case studies in subsequent chapters. The chapter presents the standard definition of gender, and illustrates its application with data from French and Hungarian. The standard definition of gender treats classifier systems and declension classes as not being gender, and the chapter shows why this is so. The standard definition does, however, treat noun class and pronoun-gender-only systems as gender systems, and the chapter reviews these types of systems as well. The chapter concludes with a tentative amendment to the typological definition of gender in order to include the robust cross-linguistic generalization that semantics determines the gender of at least a subset of nouns in each gender system.

The conclusion contains three parts. The first focuses on drawing together the results and claims across chapters. The questions raised in Chapter 1 about the morphosyntax of gender are revisited (e.g. where is gender located in the syntax?), and it is clarified how they have been answered (e.g. on the nominalizing head n). The second part identifies areas of future research, including phonologically motivated gender assignment, gender systems that contain more than three genders, and languges that lack gender. The final section provides some brief closing thoughts on the results of the book.

This chapter explains the principles determining which of the four genders a given noun is assigned to. The explanations require reference to legends and beliefs, perceived physical associations, and the indication of special properties such as eating habits and harmfulness. They interrelate with the scope of generic terms, and with correspondences in Jalnguy, the ‘mother-in-law style’. The world hosts a multiplicity of objects, properties, states, actions, concepts, ideas. In contrast, every grammar has a compact format, with a limited number of categories, parameters, and construction types. As a consequence, one typically finds that several real-world distinctions are mapped onto a single grammatical contrast. This means that the set of words with a particular grammatical profile is likely to be heterogeneous. Gender membership in Dyirbal may largely be explained in terms of (i) certain basic concepts associated with the various genders, and (ii) general principles for assigning or transferring genders.

This chapter deals with the use and function of manipulated language in contact situations. Some previously unknown forms of semi-engineered contact in Africa are described, using the example of language contact along river systems. These issues are not only central to our understanding of how language is related to the structure of society, but are also important for historical linguistics, being of relevance to current debates concerning the idea of “mixed” languages, and providing insights into the working of social stratification of language and the social mechanisms behind its development. Furthermore, they are crucial to understanding the stimulus of deliberate language change and in this respect also the dynamics of language and knowledge systems in Africa.

The principles of twofold vowel harmony and fourfold vowel harmony form, together with a number of consonant assimilations, the core of what at first sight looks like an enormous variation in suffixes. Since this apparent proliferation is largely predictable, it can neatly be reduced by adopting archetypical notations: –(y)E can be rewritten as four variants of the dative suffix: –ye, –ya, –e, and –a, and similarly, using –TE for the locative is more economical than spelling out –te, –ta, –de, and –da all the time. Another important issue is the question of how to deal with variable word stems. Only five noun classes exhibit stem variation: a dictionary form and an alternative stem; the latter being employed when a vowel follows via suffixation. The underlying mechanism is the process of re-syllabification, as set forth in the final section.

This chapter reviews research on the acquisition of paradigmatic structure (including research on canonical antonyms, morphological paradigms, associative inference, grammatical gender and noun classes). It discusses the second-order schema hypothesis, which views paradigmatic structure as mappings between constructions. New evidence from miniature artificial language learning of morphology is reported, which suggests that paradigmatic mappings involve paradigmatic associations between corresponding structures as well as an operation, copying an activated representation into the production plan. Producing a novel form of a known word is argued to involve selecting a prosodic template and filling it out with segmental material using form-meaning connections, syntagmatic and paradigmatic form-form connections and copying, which is itself an outcome cued by both semantics and phonology.