In
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
, a noun class is a particular
category
Category, plural categories, may refer to:
Philosophy and general uses
* Categorization, categories in cognitive science, information science and generally
*Category of being
* ''Categories'' (Aristotle)
*Category (Kant)
*Categories (Peirce)
* ...
of
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its
referent
A referent () is a person or thing to which a name – a linguistic expression or other symbol – refers. For example, in the sentence ''Mary saw me'', the referent of the word ''Mary'' is the particular person called Mary who is being spoken of, ...
, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some authors use the term "
grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
" as a synonym of "noun class", but others consider these different concepts. Noun classes should not be confused with
noun classifier
A classifier (abbreviated or ) is a word or affix that accompanies nouns and can be considered to "classify" a noun depending on the type of its referent. It is also sometimes called a measure word or counter word. Classifiers play an importan ...
s.
Notion
There are three main ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into noun classes:
* according to similarities in their meaning (semantic criterion);
* by grouping them with other nouns that have similar form (morphology);
* through an arbitrary convention.
Usually, a combination of the three types of criteria is used, though one is more prevalent.
Noun classes form a system of
grammatical agreement In linguistics, agreement or concord (abbreviated ) occurs when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and usually involves making the value of some grammatical category (such as gender ...
. A noun in a given class may require:
* agreement
affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
es on adjectives, pronouns, numerals, etc. in the same noun phrase,
* agreement affixes on the verb,
* a special form of pronoun to replace the noun,
* an affix on the noun,
* a class-specific word in the noun phrase.
Modern English expresses noun classes through the third person singular personal pronouns ''he'' (male person), ''she'' (female person), and ''it'' (object, abstraction, or animal), and their other inflected forms.
Countable
In mathematics, a set is countable if either it is finite or it can be made in one to one correspondence with the set of natural numbers. Equivalently, a set is ''countable'' if there exists an injective function from it into the natural numbers; ...
and uncountable nouns are distinguished by the choice of ''many''/''much''. The choice between the relative pronoun ''who'' (persons) and ''which'' (non-persons) may also be considered a form of agreement with a semantic noun class. A few nouns also exhibit vestigial noun classes, such as ''stewardess'', where the suffix ''-ess'' added to ''steward'' denotes a female person. This type of noun affixation is not very frequent in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
, but quite common in languages which have the true
grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
, including most of the
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
family, to which English belongs.
In languages without inflectional noun classes, nouns may still be extensively categorized by independent particles called
noun classifier
A classifier (abbreviated or ) is a word or affix that accompanies nouns and can be considered to "classify" a noun depending on the type of its referent. It is also sometimes called a measure word or counter word. Classifiers play an importan ...
s.
Common criteria for noun classes
Common criteria that define noun classes include:
*
animate vs. inanimate (as in
Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
)
* rational vs. non-rational (as in
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
)
* human vs. non-human
* human vs. animal (zoic) vs. inanimate (as in
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles
Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...
in
masculine virile Masculine virile is an issue relating to verbs and/or nouns in some languages, such as Polish language, Polish, which refer to male humans but not male animals. They are therefore not to be confused with mere animacy.
Example
In Polish one would sa ...
)
* male vs. other
* male human vs. other
* masculine vs. feminine
* masculine vs. feminine vs. neuter
* common vs. neuter
* strong vs. weak
* augmentative vs. diminutive
*
countable
In mathematics, a set is countable if either it is finite or it can be made in one to one correspondence with the set of natural numbers. Equivalently, a set is ''countable'' if there exists an injective function from it into the natural numbers; ...
vs.
uncountable
In mathematics, an uncountable set (or uncountably infinite set) is an infinite set that contains too many elements to be countable. The uncountability of a set is closely related to its cardinal number: a set is uncountable if its cardinal num ...
Language families
Algonquian languages
The
Ojibwe language
Ojibwe , also known as Ojibwa , Ojibway, Otchipwe,R. R. Bishop Baraga, 1878''A Theoretical and Practical Grammar of the Otchipwe Language''/ref> Ojibwemowin, or Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of North America of the Algonquian lan ...
and other members of the
Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages ( or ; also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Indigenous languages of the Americas, indigenous American languages that include most languages in the Algic languages, Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language f ...
distinguish between animate and inanimate classes. Some sources argue that the distinction is between things which are powerful and things which are not. All living things, as well as sacred things and things connected to the Earth are considered powerful and belong to the animate class. Still, the assignment is somewhat arbitrary, as "
raspberry
The raspberry is the edible fruit of a multitude of plant species in the genus ''Rubus'' of the rose family, most of which are in the subgenus '' Idaeobatus''. The name also applies to these plants themselves. Raspberries are perennial with w ...
" is animate, but "
strawberry
The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown hybrid species of the genus '' Fragaria'', collectively known as the strawberries, which are cultivated worldwide for their fruit. The fruit is widely ap ...
" is inanimate.
Athabaskan languages
In
Navajo
The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States.
With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...
(
Southern Athabaskan
Southern Athabaskan (also Apachean) is a subfamily of Athabaskan languages spoken primarily in the Southwestern United States (including Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah) with two outliers in Oklahoma and Texas. The language is spoken to a ...
) nouns are classified according to their animacy, shape, and consistency.
Morphologically, however, the distinctions are not expressed on the nouns themselves, but on the verbs of which the nouns are the subject or direct object. For example, in the sentence ' "My shirt is lying on the bed", the verb "lies" is used because the subject ' "my shirt" is a flat, flexible object. In the sentence "My belt is lying on the bed", the verb ' "lies" is used because the subject ' "my belt" is a slender, flexible object.
Koyukon
The Koyukon (russian: Коюконы) are an Alaska Native Athabascan people of the Athabascan-speaking ethnolinguistic group. Their traditional territory is along the Koyukuk and Yukon rivers where they subsisted for thousands of years by ...
(
Northern Athabaskan
Northern Athabaskan is a geographic sub-grouping of the Athabaskan language family spoken by indigenous peoples in the northern part of North America, particularly in Alaska (Alaskan Athabaskans), Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. The Northe ...
) has a more intricate system of classification. Like Navajo, it has classificatory verb stems that classify nouns according to animacy, shape, and consistency. However, in addition to these verb stems, Koyukon verbs have what are called "gender prefixes" that further classify nouns. That is, Koyukon has two different systems that classify nouns: (a) a classificatory verb system and (b) a gender system. To illustrate, the verb stem ''-tonh'' is used for enclosed objects. When ''-tonh'' is combined with different gender prefixes, it can result in ''daaltonh'' which refers to objects enclosed in boxes or ''etltonh'' which refers to objects enclosed in bags.
Australian Aboriginal languages
The
Dyirbal language
Dyirbal (also ''Djirubal'') is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in northeast Queensland by the Dyirbal people. In 2016, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported that there were 8 speakers of the language. It is a member of the sm ...
is well known for its system of four noun classes, which tend to be divided along the following semantic lines:
The class usually labeled "feminine", for instance, includes the word for fire and nouns relating to fire, as well as all dangerous creatures and phenomena. (This inspired the title of the
George Lakoff
George Philip Lakoff (; born May 24, 1941) is an American cognitive linguistics, cognitive linguist and philosopher, best known for his thesis that people's lives are significantly influenced by the conceptual metaphors they use to explain comple ...
book ''
Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things
''Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind'' is a non-fiction book by the cognitive linguist George Lakoff. The book, first published by the University of Chicago Press in 1987, puts forward a model of cognition ar ...
''.)
The
Ngangikurrunggurr language has noun classes reserved for canines and hunting weapons. The
Anindilyakwa language
Anindilyakwa () is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Anindilyakwa people on Groote Eylandt and Bickerton Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory of Australia. Anindilyakwa is a multiple-classifying prefixin ...
has a noun class for things that reflect light. The
Diyari language
Diyari () or Dieri () is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken by the Diyari people in the far north of South Australia, to the east of Lake Eyre. It was studied by German Lutheran missionaries who translated Christian works into the languag ...
distinguishes only between female and other objects. Perhaps the most noun classes in any Australian language are found in
Yanyuwa, which has 16 noun classes, including nouns associated with food, trees and abstractions, in addition to separate classes for men and masculine things, women and feminine things. In the men's dialect, the classes for men and for masculine things have simplified to a single class, marked the same way as the women's dialect marker reserved exclusively for men.
Basque
In
Basque
Basque may refer to:
* Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France
* Basque language, their language
Places
* Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France
* Basque Country (autonomous co ...
there are two classes, animate and inanimate; however, the only difference is in the declension of locative cases (inessive, ablative, allative, terminal allative, and directional allative). For inanimate nouns, the locative case endings are attached directly if the noun is singular, and plural and indefinite number are marked by the suffixes ''-eta-'' and ''-(e)ta-'', respectively, before the case ending (this is in contrast to the non-locative cases, which follow a different system of number marking where the indefinite form of the ending is the most basic). For example, the noun ''etxe'' "house" has the singular ablative form ''etxetik'' "from the house", the plural ablative form ''etxeetatik'' "from the houses", and the indefinite ablative form ''etxetatik'' (the indefinite form is mainly used with determiners that precede the noun: ''zenbat etxetatik'' "from how many houses"). For animate nouns, on the other hand, the locative case endings are attached (with some phonetic adjustments) to the suffix ''-gan-'', which is itself attached to the singular, plural, or indefinite genitive case ending. Alternatively, ''-gan-'' may attach to the absolutive case form of the word if it ends in a vowel. For example, the noun ''ume'' "child" has the singular ablative form ''umearengandik'' or ''umeagandik'' "from the child", the plural ablative form ''umeengandik'' "from the children", and the indefinite ablative form ''umerengandik'' or ''umegandik'' (cf. the genitive forms ''umearen'', ''umeen'', and ''umeren'' and the absolutive forms ''umea'', ''umeak'', and ''ume''). In the inessive case, the case suffix is replaced entirely by ''-gan'' for animate nouns (compare ''etxean'' "in/at the house" and ''umearengan''/''umeagan'' "in/at the child").
Caucasian languages
Some members of the
Northwest Caucasian
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called West Caucasian, Abkhazo-Adyghean, Abkhazo-Circassian, Circassic, or sometimes ''Pontic languages'' (from the historical region of Pontus, in contrast to ''Caspian languages'' for the Northeast Cauc ...
family, and almost all of the
Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as in ...
, manifest noun class. In the Northeast Caucasian family, only
Lezgian,
Udi Udi may refer to:
Places
* Udi, Enugu, a local government areas and city in Nigeria
* Udi, a place in the Etawah district of Uttar Pradesh, India
People
* Udi Gal (born 1979), Israeli Olympic sailor
* Udi Vaks (born 1979), Israeli Olympic judoka
...
, and
Aghul do not have noun classes. Some languages have only two classes, whereas
Bats
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera.''cheir'', "hand" and πτερόν''pteron'', "wing". With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most bi ...
has eight. The most widespread system, however, has four classes: male, female, animate beings and certain objects, and finally a class for the remaining nouns. The
Andi language has a noun class reserved for insects.
Among Northwest Caucasian languages, only
Abkhaz and
Abaza have noun class, making use of a human male/human female/non-human distinction.
In all Caucasian languages that manifest class, it is not marked on the noun itself but on the dependent verbs, adjectives, pronouns and postpositions or prepositions.
Atlantic–Congo languages
Atlantic–Congo languages
The Atlantic–Congo languages are the largest demonstrated family of languages in Africa. They have characteristic noun class systems and form the core of the Niger–Congo family hypothesis. They comprise all of Niger–Congo apart from Mande ...
can have ten or more noun classes, defined according to non-sexual criteria. Certain nominal classes are reserved for humans. The
Fula language has about 26 noun classes (the exact number varies slightly by dialect). According to
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
P ...
, the
Kivunjo language has 16 noun classes including classes for precise locations and for general locales, classes for clusters or pairs of objects and classes for the objects that come in pairs or clusters, and classes for abstract qualities.
Bantu languages
According to
Carl Meinhof
Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof (23 July 1857 – 11 February 1944) was a German linguist and one of the first linguists to study African languages.
Early years and career
Meinhof was born in Barzwitz near Rügenwalde in the Province of Po ...
, the
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages.
The t ...
have a total of 22 noun classes called nominal classes (this notion was introduced by
W. H. J. Bleek). While no single language is known to express all of them, most of them have at least 10 noun classes. For example, by Meinhof's numbering,
Shona
Shona often refers to:
* Shona people, a Southern African people
* Shona language, a Bantu language spoken by Shona people today
Shona may also refer to:
* ''Shona'' (album), 1994 album by New Zealand singer Shona Laing
* Shona (given name)
* S ...
has 20 classes,
Swahili has 15,
Sotho Sotho may refer to:
*Sotho people (or ''Basotho''), an African ethnic group principally resident in South Africa, Lesotho and southern Botswana
* Sotho language (''Sesotho'' or ''Southern Sotho''), a Bantu language spoken in southern Africa, an off ...
has 18 and
Ganda has 17.
Additionally, there are polyplural noun classes. A polyplural noun class is a plural class for more than one singular class.
For example,
Proto-Bantu
Proto-Bantu is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Bantu languages, a subgroup of the Southern Bantoid languages. It is thought to have originally been spoken in West/Central Africa in the area of what is now Cameroon.Dimmendaal, Gerrit J. ( ...
class 10 contains plurals of class 9 nouns and class 11 nouns, while class 6 contains plurals of class 5 nouns and class 15 nouns. Classes 6 and 10 are inherited as polyplural classes by most surviving Bantu languages, but many languages have developed new polyplural classes that are not widely shared by other languages.
Specialists in Bantu emphasize that there is a clear difference between genders (such as known from
Afro-Asiatic
The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...
and
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
) and nominal classes (such as known from Niger–Congo). Languages with nominal classes divide nouns formally on the base of
hyperonymic meanings. The category of nominal class replaces not only the category of gender, but also the categories of
number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
and
case.
Critics of the Meinhof's approach notice that his numbering system of nominal classes counts singular and plural numbers of the same noun as belonging to separate classes. This seems to them to be inconsistent with the way other languages are traditionally considered, where number is orthogonal to gender (according to the critics, a Meinhof-style analysis would give
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
9 genders). If one follows broader linguistic tradition and counts singular and plural as belonging to the same class, then Swahili has 8 or 9 noun classes, Sotho has 11 and Ganda has 10.
The Meinhof numbering tends to be used in scientific works dealing with comparisons of different Bantu languages. For instance, in
Swahili the word ''rafiki'' ‘friend’ belongs to the class 9 and its "plural form" is ''marafiki'' of the class 6, even if most nouns of the 9 class have the plural of the class 10. For this reason, noun classes are often referred to by combining their singular and plural forms, e.g., ''rafiki'' would be classified as "9/6", indicating that it takes class 9 in the singular, and class 6 in the plural.
However not all Bantu languages have these exceptions. In
Ganda each singular class has a corresponding plural class (apart from one class which has no singular–plural distinction; also some plural classes correspond to more than one singular class) and there are no exceptions as there are in Swahili. For this reason Ganda linguists use the orthogonal numbering system when discussing Ganda grammar (other than in the context of
Bantu
Bantu may refer to:
*Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages
*Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language
* Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle
*Black Association for National ...
comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness.
Genetic relatedness ...
), giving the 10 traditional noun classes of that language.
The distinction between genders and nominal classes is blurred still further by Indo-European languages that have nouns that behave like Swahili's ''rafiki''.
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
, for example, has a group of nouns deriving from
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
neuter nouns that acts as masculine in the singular but feminine in the plural: ''il braccio''/''le braccia''; ''l'uovo''/''le uova''. (These nouns are still placed in a neuter gender of their own by some grammarians.)
= Nominal classes in Swahili
=
"Ø-" means
no prefix. Some classes are
homonym
In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones (equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definition, ...
ous (esp. 9 and 10). The Proto-Bantu class 12 disappeared in Swahili, class 13 merged with 7, and 14 with 11.
Class prefixes appear also on adjectives and verbs, e.g.:
The
class markers which appear on the adjectives and verbs may differ from the noun prefixes:
In this example, the verbal prefix a- and the pronominal prefix wa- are in concordance with the noun prefix m-: they all express class 1 despite of their different forms.
Zande
The
Zande language
Zande is the largest of the Zande languages. It is spoken by the Azande, primarily in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and western South Sudan, but also in the eastern part of the Central African Republic. It is called Pazan ...
distinguishes four noun classes:
There are about 80 inanimate nouns which are in the animate class, including nouns denoting heavenly objects (moon, rainbow), metal objects (hammer, ring), edible plants (sweet potato, pea), and non-metallic objects (whistle, ball). Many of the exceptions have a round shape, and some can be explained by the role they play in Zande mythology.
Noun classes versus grammatical gender
The term gender, as used by some linguists, refers to a noun-class system composed with 2, 3, or 4 classes, particularly if the classification is semantically based on a distinction between masculine and feminine. Genders are then considered a sub-class of noun classes. Not all linguists recognize a distinction between noun-classes and genders, however, and instead use either the term "gender" or "noun class" for both.
Noun classes versus noun classifiers
Some languages, such as Japanese,
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
and the
Tai languages
The Tai or Zhuang–Tai languages ( th, ภาษาไท or , transliteration: or ) are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family. The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai–Kadai languages, including Standard Thai or Si ...
, have elaborate systems of
particles
In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass.
They vary greatly in size or quantity, from s ...
that go with nouns based on shape and function, but are
free morpheme
In linguistics, a bound morpheme is a morpheme (the elementary unit of morphosyntax) that can appear only as part of a larger expression; a free morpheme (or unbound morpheme) is one that can stand alone. A bound morpheme is a type of bound form, ...
s rather than affixes. Because the classes defined by these classifying words are not generally distinguished in other contexts, there are many linguists who take the view that they do not create noun classes.
List of languages by type of noun classification
Languages with noun classes
*all
Bantu language
The Bantu languages (English: , Proto-Bantu: *bantʊ̀) are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu people of Central, Southern, Eastern africa and Southeast Africa. They form the largest branch of the Southern Bantoid languages.
The t ...
s such as
**
Ganda: ten classes called simply ''Class I'' to ''Class X'' and containing all sorts of arbitrary groupings but often characterised as ''people'', ''long objects'', ''animals'', ''miscellaneous objects'', ''large objects and liquids'', ''small objects'', ''languages'', ''pejoratives'', ''infinitives'', ''mass nouns'', plus four 'locative' classes. Alternatively, the Meinhof system of counting singular and plural as separate classes gives a total of 21 classes including the four locatives.
**
Swahili
**
Zulu
*
Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages, also called East Caucasian, Nakh-Daghestani or ''Vainakh-Daghestani'', is a family of languages spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia and in Northern Azerbaijan as well as in ...
such as
Bats
Bats are mammals of the order Chiroptera.''cheir'', "hand" and πτερόν''pteron'', "wing". With their forelimbs adapted as wings, they are the only mammals capable of true and sustained flight. Bats are more agile in flight than most bi ...
*
Dyirbal: ''Masculine'', ''feminine'', ''vegetable'' and ''other''. (Some linguists do not regard the noun-class system of this language as grammatical gender.)
*
Atlantic languages
The West Atlantic languages (also the Atlantic languages"West Atlantic" is the traditional term, following Diedrich Hermann Westermann; "Atlantic" is more typical in recent work, particularly since Bendor-Samuel (1989), but is also used specific ...
**
Fula
Fula may refer to:
*Fula people (or Fulani, Fulɓe)
*Fula language (or Pulaar, Fulfulde, Fulani)
**The Fula variety known as the Pulaar language
**The Fula variety known as the Pular language
**The Fula variety known as Maasina Fulfulde
*Al-Fula ...
(Fulfulde, Pulaar, Pular)
**
Wolof
Wolof or Wollof may refer to:
* Wolof people, an ethnic group found in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania
* Wolof language, a language spoken in Senegal, Gambia, and Mauritania
* The Wolof or Jolof Empire, a medieval West African successor of the Mal ...
*
Arapesh languages
The Arapesh languages are several closely related Torricelli languages of the 32,000 Arapesh people of Papua New Guinea. They are spoken in eastern Sandaun Province and northern East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea.
The Arapesh languages are a ...
such as
Mufian
Languages with grammatical genders
See also
*
Animacy
*
Classifier (linguistics)
A classifier (abbreviated or ) is a word or affix that accompanies nouns and can be considered to "classify" a noun depending on the type of its referent. It is also sometimes called a measure word or counter word. Classifiers play an important ...
*
Declension
In linguistics, declension (verb: ''to decline'') is the changing of the form of a word, generally to express its syntactic function in the sentence, by way of some inflection. Declensions may apply to nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, and ar ...
*
Grammatical agreement In linguistics, agreement or concord (abbreviated ) occurs when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and usually involves making the value of some grammatical category (such as gender ...
*
Grammatical category
In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusiv ...
*
Grammatical conjugation
In linguistics, conjugation () is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (alteration of form according to rules of grammar). For instance, the verb ''break'' can be conjugated to form the words ''break'', ...
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Grammatical gender
In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns ...
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Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, adjectives and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one", "two" or "three or more"). English and other languages present number categories of ...
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Inflection
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...
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Redundancy (linguistics)
In linguistics, redundancy refers to information that is expressed more than once.
Examples of redundancies include multiple agreement features in morphology, multiple features distinguishing phonemes in phonology, or the use of multiple words t ...
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Synthetic language
A synthetic language uses inflection or agglutination to express Syntax, syntactic relationships within a sentence. Inflection is the addition of morphemes to a root word that assigns grammatical property to that word, while agglutination is the ...
References
Inline
General
* Craig, Colette G. (1986).
Noun classes and categorization: Proceedings of a symposium on categorization and noun classification Eugene, Oregon, October 1983''. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.
* – A comprehensive study; looks at 200 languages.
* Corbett, Geville (1994) "Gender and gender systems". En R. Asher (ed.) ''The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics'', Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 1347–1353.
* Greenberg, J. H. (1978) "How does a language acquire gender markers?". En J. H. Greenberg et al. (eds.) ''Universals of Human Language'', Vol. 4, pp. 47–82.
* Hockett, Charles F. (1958) ''A Course in Modern Linguistics'', Macmillan.
* Ibrahim, M. (1973) ''Grammatical gender. Its origin and development''. La Haya: Mouton.
* Iturrioz, J. L. (1986) "Structure, meaning and function: a functional analysis of gender and other classificatory techniques". ''Función'' 1. 1-3.
* Meissner, Antje &
Anne Storch
Anne Storch (born 16 September 1968 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany) is a German linguist and professor of African studies at the University of Cologne.
Career
Storch studied African linguistics, ethnology, and history at Frankfurt am Main.
From 1 ...
(eds.) (2000) ''Nominal classification in African languages'', Institut für Afrikanische Sprachwissenschaften, Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. .
* Ohly, R., Kraska-Szlenk, i., Podobińska, Z. (1998) ''Język suahili.'' Wydawnictwo Akademickie "Dialog". Warszawa.
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Pinker, Steven (1994) ''
The Language Instinct
''The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language'' is a 1994 book by Steven Pinker, written for a general audience. Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. He deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim t ...
'', William Morrow and Company.
* Мячина, Е.Н. (1987) ''Краткий грамматический очерк языка суахили.'' In: ''Суахили-русский словарь. Kamusi ya Kiswahili-Kirusi.'' Москва. "Русский Язык".
SIL: Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is a noun class?
External links
World Atlas of Language Structures:*Global map and discussion of languages by type of noun class a
WALS: Number of Genders*
Swahili
:* Contini-Morava, Ellen.
Noun Classification in Swahili'. 1994.
{{Authority control
Grammatical gender
Linguistic morphology