Combining gender and classifiers in natural language

Workshop on Gender and Classifiers: Areal and Genealogical Perspectives

Following our highly successful Workshop on Gender and classifiers: Cross-linguistic perspectives on the typology of nominal classification systems in 2014, this Workshop on Gender and Classifiers: Areal and Genealogical Perspectives will look more closely at the areal and genealogical distribution of gender and classifiers in the languages of the world.

The workshop will take place 26-27 January 2015, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands as part of the project Combining gender and classifiers in natural language.

Background

Certain types of classification system are typically associated with a language family or a linguistic area and we are interested in evidence which confirms or contradicts these tendencies. Many Indo-European languages have a two-term or three-term gender system with a masculine-feminine distinction, where a subset of the nouns are allotted to their genders based on biological sex. In Africa the situation is different. While Afroasiatic languages (e.g. Arabic, Somali, Berber) have two-term gender systems build on a masculine-feminine contrast, in Niger-Congo languages (e.g. Swahili, Chichewa, Eegimaa) larger systems are prevalent including a gender for either humans or animates. Southeast Asian languages (e.g. Chinese, Burmese, Vietnamese) typically have numeral classifiers, which essentially specify counting units. The usual Australian gender system has four distinctions, one of them being a gender for vegetables. If Australian languages have classifiers, they tend to be noun classifiers rather than numeral classifiers. Many languages in the Amazon area (e.g. Miraña, Tucano, Tariana) have been reported to have complex nominal classification systems mid-way between gender and classifiers.

For this workshop we solicited contributions which address the morphology, morphosyntax, syntax or semantics of nominal classification systems from an areal or a genealogical perspective. We are especially interested in languages, language families and areas in which gender and classifiers occur in combination. Abstracts dealing with such languages, language families or areas were particularly welcome.

Programme

26 January 2015

27 January 2015