Noun class
Encyclopedia
In linguistics
, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing noun
s. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional. Some authors use the term "grammatical gender
" as a synonym of "noun class", but others use different definitions for each (see below). Noun classes should not be confused with noun classifiers.
Usually, a combination of the three types of criteria is used, though one is more prevalent.
Noun classes form a system of grammatical agreement
. The fact that a noun belongs to a given class may imply the presence of:
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. The choice between the relative pronoun who (persons) and which (non-persons) may also be considered a way of categorizing nouns into noun classes. 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
, but quite common in languages which have the true grammatical gender
, including most of the Indo-European
family, to which English belongs.
When noun class is expressed on other parts of speech, besides nouns and pronouns, the language is said to have grammatical gender.
In languages without inflectional noun classes, nouns may still be extensively categorized by independent particles called noun classifiers.
See Swahili for the semantic motivations for an elaborate noun-class system.
and other members of the Algonquian languages
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
" is animate, but "strawberry
" is inanimate.
(Southern Athabaskan) 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. See Navajo language: Classificatory Verbs for more discussion.
Koyukon
(Northern Athabaskan) 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.
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
book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (ISBN 0-226-46804-6).
The Ngangikurrunggurr language
has noun classes reserved for canines, and hunting weapons, and the Anindilyakwa language has a noun class for things that reflect light. The Diyari language
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.
family, and almost all of the Northeast Caucasian languages
, manifest noun class. In the Northeast Caucasian family, only Lezgian, Udi
, and Aghul
do not have noun classes. Some languages have only two classes, while the Bats language
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 prepositions.
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 (exact number varies slightly by dialect). According to Steven Pinker
, 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.
, the Bantu languages
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 has 20 classes, Swahili has 15, Sotho has 18 and Ganda has 17.
Specialists in Bantu emphasize that there is a clear difference between genders (such as known from Afro-Asiatic
and Indo-European) and nominal classes (such as known from Niger–Congo). Languages with nominal classes divide nouns formally on the base of hyperonomic meanings. The category of nominal class replaces not only the category of gender, but also the categories of number
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
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 comparative linguistics
), 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
, for example, has a group of nouns deriving from Latin 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.)
Here is a complete list of nominal classes in Swahili:
"Ø-" means no prefix
. Note also that some classes are homonym
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.
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.
In languages with genders, the gender is a selective category for nouns. This means that all nouns must be assigned to a gender, and thus all nouns may be divided into groups, considering their gender. For instance, the Polish word ręcznik ‘towel’ is of inanimate masculine gender, whereas words for male human beings and animals belong to the personal masculine and animate masculine genders respectively; encyklopedia ‘encyclopaedia’ is of feminine gender, which includes words for female human beings and animals; and krzesło ‘chair’ is of neuter gender, which includes words for neuter animals and the word 'child'. The word "gender" derives from Latin genus, which is also the root of genre, and originally meant "kind", so it does not necessarily have a sexual meaning. For instance, in Swedish nouns are either of common or neuter gender; words for both males and females are assigned to common.
A language has grammatical gender when changes in the gender of a noun
necessarily induce morphological
changes in adjective
s and other parts of speech (such as verbs) that refer to that noun. For adjective and some other inflecting
words, gender is an inflected category. It means that (in languages with genders) adjectives are inflected by genders, or change their forms depending on gender of the noun to which they refer. In yet other words, when a noun belongs to a certain gender, other parts of speech that refer to that noun have to be inflected to be in the same class. These obligatory changes are called gender agreement
.
In Polish
, the adjective which means ‘big, large’ has three forms (in nominative singular
), one for masculine, one for feminine, and one for neuter gender: duży ręcznik ‘big towel’, duża encyklopedia ‘big encyclopaedia’, duże krzesło ‘big chair’.
and the Tai languages
, have elaborate systems of particles
which classify nouns based on shape and function, but are free morphemes rather than affixes. Because the classes defined by these classifying words are not generally distinguished in other contexts, many if not most linguists take the view that they do not create grammatical genders.
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional. Some authors use the term "grammatical gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
" as a synonym of "noun class", but others use different definitions for each (see below). Noun classes should not be confused with noun classifiers.
Notion
In general, 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), or
- 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
Agreement (linguistics)
In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
. The fact that a noun belongs to a given class may imply the presence of:
- agreement affixes on adjectives, pronouns, numerals etc. which are noun phrase constituents,
- agreement affixes on the verb,
- a special form of a pronoun which replaces the noun,
- an affix on the noun,
- a class-specific word in the noun phrase (or in some types of noun phrases).
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. The choice between the relative pronoun who (persons) and which (non-persons) may also be considered a way of categorizing nouns into noun classes. 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 language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, but quite common in languages which have the true grammatical gender
Grammatical gender
Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
, including most of the Indo-European
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major current languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and South Asia and also historically predominant in Anatolia...
family, to which English belongs.
When noun class is expressed on other parts of speech, besides nouns and pronouns, the language is said to have grammatical gender.
In languages without inflectional noun classes, nouns may still be extensively categorized by independent particles called noun classifiers.
Common criteria for noun classes
Common criteria that define noun classes include:- animate vs. inanimateAnimacyAnimacy is a grammatical and/or semantic category of nouns based on how sentient or alive the referent of the noun in a given taxonomic scheme is...
(as in OjibweOjibwe languageOjibwe , also called Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of the Algonquian language family. Ojibwe is characterized by a series of dialects that have local names and frequently local writing systems...
) - rational vs. non-rational (as in TamilTamil languageTamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
) - human vs. non-human
- human vs. animal vs. inanimate
- male vs. other
- male human vs. other
- masculine vs. feminine
- masculine vs. feminine vs. neuter
- strong vs. weak
- augmentative vs. diminutive
See Swahili for the semantic motivations for an elaborate noun-class system.
Algonquian languages
The Ojibwe languageOjibwe language
Ojibwe , also called Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of the Algonquian language family. Ojibwe is characterized by a series of dialects that have local names and frequently local writing systems...
and other members of the Algonquian languages
Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Native American languages which includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a...
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
Raspberry
The raspberry or hindberry is the edible fruit of a multitude of plant species in the genus Rubus, most of which are in the subgenus Idaeobatus; the name also applies to these plants themselves...
" is animate, but "strawberry
Strawberry
Fragaria is a genus of flowering plants in the rose family, Rosaceae, commonly known as strawberries for their edible fruits. Although it is commonly thought that strawberries get their name from straw being used as a mulch in cultivating the plants, the etymology of the word is uncertain. There...
" is inanimate.
Athabaskan languages
In NavajoNavajo language
Navajo or Navaho is an Athabaskan language spoken in the southwestern United States. It is geographically and linguistically one of the Southern Athabaskan languages .Navajo has more speakers than any other Native American language north of the...
(Southern Athabaskan) nouns are classified according to their animacy, shape, and consistency. Morphologically
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
, 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. See Navajo language: Classificatory Verbs for more discussion.
Koyukon
Koyukon
The Koyukon are a group of Athabaskan people living in northern Alaska. Their traditional home is along the Koyukuk and Yukon rivers where they subsisted by hunting and trapping for thousands of years...
(Northern Athabaskan) 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 languageDyirbal language
Dyirbal is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in northeast Queensland by about 5 speakers of the Dyirbal tribe. It is a member of the small Dyirbalic branch of the Pama–Nyungan family...
is well known for its system of four noun classes, which tend to be divided along the following semantic lines:
- I — animate objects, men
- II — women, waterWaterWater is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...
, fireFireFire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....
, violenceViolenceViolence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g... - III — edible fruitFruitIn broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...
and vegetableVegetableThe noun vegetable usually means an edible plant or part of a plant other than a sweet fruit or seed. This typically means the leaf, stem, or root of a plant....
s - IV — miscellaneous (includes things not classifiable in the first three)
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 Lakoff
George P. Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist and professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1972...
book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things (ISBN 0-226-46804-6).
The Ngangikurrunggurr language
Ngangikurrunggurr language
Ngan’gikurunggurr is an Indigenous language spoken in the Daly River region of Australia’s Northern Territory. This language is often simply referred to as Ngan’gi , but is spoken in two distinctly named but mutually intelligible varieties called Ngan’gikurunggurr and Ngen’giwumirri...
has noun classes reserved for canines, and hunting weapons, and the Anindilyakwa language has a noun class for things that reflect light. The Diyari language
Diyari language
Diyari or Dieri is an Australian Aboriginal language of South Australia spoken by the Diyari tribe.-Vowels:-Consonants:The voiced alveolar stop may have trilled release depending on dialect...
distinguishes only between female and other objects. Perhaps the most noun classes in any Australian language are found in
Yanyuwa
Yanyuwa language
The Yanyuwa language is spoken by the Yanyuwa people around the settlement of Borroloola in the Northern Territory, Australia....
, 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.
Caucasian languages
Some members of the Northwest CaucasianNorthwest Caucasian languages
The Northwest Caucasian languages, also called Abkhazo-Adyghean, or sometimes Pontic as opposed to Caspian for the Northeast Caucasian languages, are a group of languages spoken in the Caucasus region, chiefly in Russia , the disputed territory of Abkhazia, and Turkey, with smaller communities...
family, and almost all of the Northeast Caucasian languages
Northeast Caucasian languages
The Northeast Caucasian languages constitute a language family spoken in the Russian republics of Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, northern Azerbaijan, and in northeastern Georgia, as well as in diaspora populations in Russia, Turkey, and the Middle East...
, manifest noun class. In the Northeast Caucasian family, only Lezgian, Udi
Udi language
The Udi language, spoken by the Udi people, is a member of the Lezgic branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family. It is believed an earlier form of it was the main language of Caucasian Albania, which stretched from south Dagestan to current day Azerbaijan.The language is spoken by about...
, and Aghul
Aghul language
Aghul, also spelled Agul, is a language spoken by the Aguls who live in southern Dagestan, Russia and in Azerbaijan. It is spoken by about 28,300 people .-Classification:...
do not have noun classes. Some languages have only two classes, while the Bats language
Bats language
Bats is the language of the Bats people, a Caucasian minority group, and is part of the Nakh family of Caucasian languages. It had 2,500 to 3,000 speakers in 1975....
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
Andi language
The Andi language is part of the Avar–Andic branch of the Northeast Caucasian languages. The Andi population was about 8,000 in 1926. In 2002 approximately 21,800 speakers were identified. There are four dialects, Munin, Rikvani, Kvanxidatl, and Gagatl, which appear quite divergent. Speakers...
has a noun class reserved for insects.
Among Northwest Caucasian languages, only Abkhaz
Abkhaz language
Abkhaz is a Northwest Caucasian language spoken mainly by the Abkhaz people. It is the official language of Abkhazia where around 100,000 people speak it. Furthermore, it is spoken by thousands of members of the Abkhazian diaspora in Turkey, Georgia's autonomous republic of Adjara, Syria, Jordan...
and Abaza
Abaza language
The Abaza language is a language of the Caucasus mountains in the Russian Karachay-Cherkess Republic by the Abazins...
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 prepositions.
Niger–Congo languages
Niger–Congo languagesNiger–Congo languages
The Niger–Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area, number of speakers, and number of distinct languages. They may constitute the world's largest language family in terms of distinct languages, although this question...
can have ten or more noun classes, defined according to non-sexual criteria. Certain nominal classes are reserved for humans. The Fula language
Fula language
The Fula or Fulani language is a language of West Africa. It is spoken as a first language by the and related groups from Senegambia and Guinea to Cameroon and Sudan...
has about 26 noun classes (exact number varies slightly by dialect). According to Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
, the Kivunjo language
Kivunjo language
The Vunjo language, or Kiwunjo, is a Bantu language, spoken mainly in Tanzania and by some over the border in Kenya, by approximately 300,000 Chaga people. It is spoken in the Chaga area of the Kilimanjaro region...
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 MeinhofCarl Meinhof
Carl Friedrich Michael Meinhof was a German linguist and one of the first linguists to study African languages.-Early years and career:...
, the Bantu languages
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
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 has 20 classes, Swahili has 15, Sotho has 18 and Ganda has 17.
Specialists in Bantu emphasize that there is a clear difference between genders (such as known from Afro-Asiatic
Afro-Asiatic languages
The Afroasiatic languages , also known as Hamito-Semitic, constitute one of the world's largest language families, with about 375 living languages...
and Indo-European) and nominal classes (such as known from Niger–Congo). Languages with nominal classes divide nouns formally on the base of hyperonomic meanings. The category of nominal class replaces not only the category of gender, but also the categories of number
Number
A number is a mathematical object used to count and measure. In mathematics, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers....
and case
Grammatical case
In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun is an inflectional form that indicates its grammatical function in a phrase, clause, or sentence. For example, a pronoun may play the role of subject , of direct object , or of possessor...
.
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
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
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
Swahili language
Swahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
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 comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical 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 language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, for example, has a group of nouns deriving from Latin 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.)
Here is a complete list of nominal classes in Swahili:
| Class number | Prefix | Typical meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | m-, mw-, mu- | singular: persons |
| 2 | wa-, w- | plural: persons (a plural counterpart of class 1) |
| 3 | m-, mw-, mu- | singular: plants |
| 4 | mi-, my- | plural: plants (a plural counterpart of class 3) |
| 5 | ji-, j-, Ø- | singular: fruits |
| 6 | ma-, m- | plural: fruits (a plural counterpart of class 5, 9, 11, seldom 1) |
| 7 | ki-, ch- | singular: things |
| 8 | vi-, vy- | plural: things (a plural counterpart of class 7) |
| 9 | n-, ny-, m-, Ø- | singular: animals, things |
| 10 | n-, ny-, m-, Ø- | plural: animals, things (a plural counterpart of class 9 and 11) |
| 11 | u-, w-, uw- | singular: no clear semantics |
| 15 | ku-, kw- | verbal nouns |
| 16 | pa- | locative meanings: close to something |
| 17 | ku- | indefinite locative or directive meaning |
| 18 | mu-, m- | locative meanings: inside something |
"Ø-" means no prefix
Null morpheme
In morpheme-based morphology, a null morpheme is a morpheme that is realized by a phonologically null affix . In simpler terms, a null morpheme is an "invisible" affix. It is also called a zero morpheme; the process of adding a null morpheme is called null affixation, null derivation or zero...
. Note also that some classes are homonym
Homonym
In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that often but not necessarily share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings...
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.:
- Kitabu kikubwa kinaanguka. (cl.7-book cl.7-big cl.7-PRESENT-fall)
- ‘The big book falls.’
The class markers
Marker (linguistics)
In linguistics, a marker is a free or bound morpheme that indicates the grammatical function of the marked word, phrase, or sentence. In analytic languages and agglutinative languages, markers are generally easily distinguished. In fusional languages and polysynthetic languages, this is often not...
which appear on the adjectives and verbs may differ from the noun prefixes:
- Mtoto wangu alikinunua kitabu. (cl.1-child cl.1-my cl.1-PAST-cl.7-buy cl.7-book)
- ‘My child bought a book.’
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 languageZande language
Zande is an Ubangian language 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.-External links:****...
distinguishes four noun classes:
| Criterion | Example | Translation |
|---|---|---|
| human (male) | kumba | man |
| human (female) | dia | wife |
| animate | nya | beast |
| other | bambu | house |
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 genders
The term gender, as used by some linguists, refers to a noun-class system composed with 2, 3, or 4 classes. Genders are, for these linguists, a special instance of noun classes. Not all linguists recognize a distinction between noun-classes and genders, however, and instead use the term "gender" for both.In languages with genders, the gender is a selective category for nouns. This means that all nouns must be assigned to a gender, and thus all nouns may be divided into groups, considering their gender. For instance, the Polish word ręcznik ‘towel’ is of inanimate masculine gender, whereas words for male human beings and animals belong to the personal masculine and animate masculine genders respectively; encyklopedia ‘encyclopaedia’ is of feminine gender, which includes words for female human beings and animals; and krzesło ‘chair’ is of neuter gender, which includes words for neuter animals and the word 'child'. The word "gender" derives from Latin genus, which is also the root of genre, and originally meant "kind", so it does not necessarily have a sexual meaning. For instance, in Swedish nouns are either of common or neuter gender; words for both males and females are assigned to common.
A language has grammatical gender when changes in the gender of a noun
Noun
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
necessarily induce morphological
Morphology (linguistics)
In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...
changes in adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s and other parts of speech (such as verbs) that refer to that noun. For adjective and some other inflecting
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
words, gender is an inflected category. It means that (in languages with genders) adjectives are inflected by genders, or change their forms depending on gender of the noun to which they refer. In yet other words, when a noun belongs to a certain gender, other parts of speech that refer to that noun have to be inflected to be in the same class. These obligatory changes are called gender agreement
Agreement (linguistics)
In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
.
In Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, the adjective which means ‘big, large’ has three forms (in nominative singular
Grammatical number
In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
), one for masculine, one for feminine, and one for neuter gender: duży ręcznik ‘big towel’, duża encyklopedia ‘big encyclopaedia’, duże krzesło ‘big chair’.
Noun classes versus noun classifiers
Some languages, such as Japanese, ChineseChinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
and the Tai languages
Tai languages
The Tai or Zhuang–Tai languages are a branch of the Tai–Kadai language family. The Tai languages include the most widely spoken of the Tai–Kadai languages, including standard Thai or Siamese, the national language of Thailand; Lao or Laotian, the national language of Laos; Burma's Shan language;...
, have elaborate systems of particles
Grammatical particle
In grammar, a particle is a function word that does not belong to any of the inflected grammatical word classes . It is a catch-all term for a heterogeneous set of words and terms that lack a precise lexical definition...
which classify nouns based on shape and function, but are free morphemes rather than affixes. Because the classes defined by these classifying words are not generally distinguished in other contexts, many if not most linguists take the view that they do not create grammatical genders.
Languages with noun classes
- all Bantu languages 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.
- SwahiliSwahili languageSwahili or Kiswahili is a Bantu language spoken by various ethnic groups that inhabit several large stretches of the Mozambique Channel coastline from northern Kenya to northern Mozambique, including the Comoro Islands. It is also spoken by ethnic minority groups in Somalia...
- ZuluZulu languageZulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...
- BatsBats languageBats is the language of the Bats people, a Caucasian minority group, and is part of the Nakh family of Caucasian languages. It had 2,500 to 3,000 speakers in 1975....
- DyirbalDyirbal languageDyirbal is an Australian Aboriginal language spoken in northeast Queensland by about 5 speakers of the Dyirbal tribe. It is a member of the small Dyirbalic branch of the Pama–Nyungan family...
: Masculine, feminine, vegetal and other. (Some linguists do not regard the noun-class system of this language as grammatical gender.) - FulaFula languageThe Fula or Fulani language is a language of West Africa. It is spoken as a first language by the and related groups from Senegambia and Guinea to Cameroon and Sudan...
(Fulfulde, Pulaar, Pular)
Languages with grammatical genders
See also
- AnimacyAnimacyAnimacy is a grammatical and/or semantic category of nouns based on how sentient or alive the referent of the noun in a given taxonomic scheme is...
- Classifier (linguistics)Classifier (linguistics)A classifier, in linguistics, sometimes called a measure word, is a word or morpheme used in some languages to classify the referent of a countable noun according to its meaning. In languages that have classifiers, they are often used when the noun is being counted or specified...
- DeclensionDeclensionIn linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and articles to indicate number , case , and gender...
- Grammatical agreementAgreement (linguistics)In languages, agreement or concord is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates....
- Grammatical categoryGrammatical categoryA grammatical category is a semantic distinction which is reflected in a morphological paradigm. Grammatical categories can have one or more exponents. For instance, the feature [number] has the exponents [singular] and [plural] in English and many other languages...
- Grammatical conjugationGrammatical conjugationIn linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, voice, or other grammatical categories...
- Grammatical genderGrammatical genderGrammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...
- Grammatical numberGrammatical numberIn linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
- InflectionInflectionIn grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
- Redundancy (language)Redundancy (language)In linguistics, redundancy is the construction of a phrase that presents some idea using more information, often via multiple means, than is necessary for one to be able understand the idea....
- Synthetic languageSynthetic languageIn linguistic typology, a synthetic language is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, as opposed to a low morpheme-per-word ratio in what is described as an isolating language...
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.
- Corbett, Greville G. (1991) Gender, Cambridge University Press —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 (eds.) (2000) Nominal classification in African languages, Institut für Afrikanische Sprachwissenschaften, Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. ISBN 3-89645-014-X.
- Ohly, R., Kraska-Szlenk, i., Podobińska, Z. (1998) Język suahili. Wydawnictwo Akademickie "Dialog". Warszawa. ISBN 83-86483-87-3
- Pinker, StevenSteven PinkerSteven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
(1994) The Language InstinctThe Language InstinctThe Language Instinct is a book by Steven Pinker for a general audience, published in 1994. In it, Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. In addition, he deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar...
, 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
- Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili. 1994.
- On nominal classes in Swahili
- World Atlas of Language Structures
- Global map and discussion of languages by type of noun class at WALS: Number of Genders