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Title Restructured Niger-Congo gender systems as another type of concurrent nominal classification
Full text http://edoc.hu-berlin.de/18452/26936; http://dx.doi.org/10.18452/26262
Date 2022
Author(s) Güldemann, Tom; Fiedler, Ines
Abstract Recent research looks increasingly at languages with more than one system of nominal classification and first systematic typological assessments of so-called 'concurrent noun classification' exist with a focus on cases involving classifiers and gender. We elaborate on this work by dealing with Niger-Congo languages that have restructured their inherited noun classification in a particular way. The inherited system entailing a strong parallelism between agreement-based gender and affix-based noun inflections shifted toward one where the gender system is reduced to an animacy-based opposition while nominal inflection maintains a considerable amount of original complexity with semantic criteria beyond those of the innovative gender distinction. While the phenomenon as such is not a new discovery, its typological relevance has gone unrecognized so far. We argue that such cases of restructured gender systems in Niger-Congo prima facie suggest themselves as candidates for a new type of concurrent noun classification, both from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. We present a detailed description of the phenomenon in the Guang language Gonja and determine whether or how it can be integrated in the available typology. We also survey its wider distribution and discuss some recurrent historical aspects of its emergence in the family. - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft - Peer Reviewed
Subject(s) animacy hierarchy; concurrent systems; Niger-Congo; nominal classification; 300 Sozialwissenschaften; ddc:300
Language eng
Publisher Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Type of publication article; doc-type:article; publishedVersion
Format application/pdf
Rights (CC BY 4.0) Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Identifier 0167-6164; urn:nbn:de:kobv:11-110-18452/26936-1; 10.1515/jall-2022-8899; 1613-3811
Repository Berlin - Humboldt University of Berlin
Added to C-A: 2023-03-22;11:52:55