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Grammatical Gender and Linguistic Complexity Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity Volume I: General issues and specific studies Edited by Francesca Di Garbo Bruno Olsson Bernhard Wälchli language Studies in Diversity Linguistics 26 science press Studies in Diversity Linguistics Editor: Martin Haspelmath In this series: 1. Handschuh, Corinna. A typology of marked-S languages. 2. Rießler, Michael. Adjective attribution. 3. Klamer, Marian (ed.). The Alor-Pantar languages: History and typology. 4. Berghäll, Liisa. A grammar of Mauwake (Papua New Guinea). 5. Wilbur, Joshua. A grammar of Pite Saami. 6. Dahl, Östen. Grammaticalization in the North: Noun phrase morphosyntax in Scandinavian vernaculars. 7. Schackow, Diana. A grammar of Yakkha. 8. Liljegren, Henrik. A grammar of Palula. 9. Shimelman, Aviva. A grammar of Yauyos Quechua. 10. Rudin, Catherine & Bryan James Gordon (eds.). Advances in the study of Siouan languages and linguistics. 11. Kluge, Angela. A grammar of Papuan Malay. 12. Kieviet, Paulus. A grammar of Rapa Nui. 13. Michaud, Alexis. Tone in Yongning Na: Lexical tones and morphotonology. 14. Enfield, N. J. (ed.). Dependencies in language: On the causal ontology of linguistic systems. 15. Gutman, Ariel. Attributive constructions in North-Eastern Neo-Aramaic. 16. Bisang, Walter & Andrej Malchukov (eds.). Unity and diversity in grammaticalization scenarios. 17. Stenzel, Kristine & Bruna Franchetto (eds.). On this and other worlds: Voices from Amazonia. 18. Paggio, Patrizia and Albert Gatt (eds.). The languages of Malta. 19. Seržant, Ilja A. & Alena Witzlack-Makarevich (eds.). Diachrony of differential argument marking. 20. Hölzl, Andreas. A typology of questions in Northeast Asia and beyond: An ecological perspective. 21. Riesberg, Sonja, Asako Shiohara & Atsuko Utsumi (eds.). Perspectives on information structure in Austronesian languages. 22. Döhler, Christian. A grammar of Komnzo. 23. Yakpo, Kofi. A Grammar of Pichi. 24. Guérin Valérie (ed.). Bridging constructions. 25. Aguilar-Guevara, Ana, Julia Pozas Loyo & Violeta Vázquez-Rojas Maldonado *eds.). Definiteness across languages. 26. Di Garbo, Francesca, Bruno Olsson & Bernhard Wälchli (eds.). Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity: Volume I: General issues and specific studies. 27. Di Garbo, Francesca, Bruno Olsson & Bernhard Wälchli (eds.). Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity: Volume II: World-wide comparative studies. ISSN: 2363-5568 Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity Volume I: General issues and specific studies Edited by Francesca Di Garbo Bruno Olsson Bernhard Wälchli language science press Di Garbo, Francesca, Bruno Olsson & Bernhard Wälchli (eds.). 2019. Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity: Volume I: General issues and specific studies (Studies in Diversity Linguistics 26). Berlin: Language Science Press. This title can be downloaded at: http://langsci-press.org/catalog/book/223 © 2019, the authors Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence (CC BY 4.0): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Indexed in EBSCO ISBN: 978-3-96110-178-8 (Digital) 978-3-96110-179-5 (Hardcover) ISSN: 2363-5568 DOI:10.5281/zenodo.3446224 Source code available from www.github.com/langsci/223 Collaborative reading: paperhive.org/documents/remote?type=langsci&id=223 Cover and concept of design: Ulrike Harbort Typesetting: Bruno Olsson, Sebastian Nordhoff Proofreading: Ahmet Bilal Özdemir, Andreas Hölzl, Andreea Calude, Brett Reynolds, Calle Börstell, Christian Döhler, George Walkden, Gerald Delahunty, Ivica Jeđud, Jeroen van de Weijer, Kate Bellamy, Lachlan Mackenzie, Laura Arnold, Marc Tang, Ludger Paschen, Martin Haspelmath, Steven Kaye, Tamara Schmidt, Tom Bossuyt, Vadim Kimmelman, Yvonne Treis Fonts: Linux Libertine, Libertinus Math, Arimo, DejaVu Sans Mono Typesetting software:Ǝ X LATEX Language Science Press Unter den Linden 6 10099 Berlin, Germany langsci-press.org Storage and cataloguing done by FU Berlin Contents 1 Introduction Francesca Di Garbo, Bruno Olsson & Bernhard Wälchli 1 I General issues 2 Canonical, complex, complicated? Jenny Audring 15 3 Gender: esoteric or exoteric? Östen Dahl 53 4 Why is gender so complex? Some typological considerations Johanna Nichols 63 II Africa 5 Niger-Congo “noun classes” conflate gender with deriflection Tom Güldemann & Ines Fiedler 95 6 Gender in Uduk Don Killian 147 III New Guinea 7 Gender in Walman Matthew S. Dryer 171 8 The gender system of Coastal Marind Bruno Olsson 197 Contents 9 Gender in New Guinea Erik Svärd 225 IV South Asia 10 Gender typology and gender (in)stability in Hindu Kush Indo-Aryan languages Henrik Liljegren 279 Index 329 vi Chapter 1 Introduction Francesca Di Garbo Stockholm University Bruno Olsson Australian National University Bernhard Wälchli Stockholm University This chapter introduces the two volumes Grammatical gender and linguistic com- plexity I: General issues and specific studies and Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity II: World-wide comparative studies. Grammatical gender is notorious for its complexity. Corbett (1991: 1) charac- terizes gender as “the most puzzling of the grammatical categories”. One reason is that the traditional definitional properties of gender – noun classes and agree- ment – are very intricate phenomena that can affect all major areas of language structure. Gender is an interface phenomenon par excellence and tends to form elaborate systems, which is why the question of how systems emerge in language development and change is highly relevant for understanding and modeling the evolution of gender systems. In addition, some of the recent literature on lin- guistic complexity claims that gender is ‘historical junk’ without any obvious function (Trudgill 2011: 156) and is likely to be lost in situations of increased non- native language acquisition (McWhorter 2001; 2007; Trudgill 1999). Not only are its synchronic functions a matter of debate, but gender also tends to be diachron- ically opaque due to its high genealogical stability and entrenchment (Nichols 1992: 142; Nichols 2003), making gender a core example of a mature phenomenon (Dahl 2004). However, despite the well-established connection between gender and linguistic complexity, and recent attempts to develop complexity metrics for gender systems (Audring 2014; 2017; Di Garbo 2016) and metrics for addressing Francesca Di Garbo, Bruno Olsson & Bernhard Wälchli. 2019. Introduction. In Francesca Di Garbo, Bruno Olsson & Bernhard Wälchli (eds.), Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity: Volume II: World-wide comparative studies, 1–13. Berlin: Lan- guage Science Press. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.3462776 Francesca Di Garbo, Bruno Olsson & Bernhard Wälchli the relationship between gender and classifiers (Passer 2016), there is so far no collection of articles particularly devoted to the relationship between grammati- cal gender and linguistic complexity. The two companion volumes introduced here are an attempt to fill thisgap. They address the topics of gender and linguistic complexity from a range ofdif- ferent perspectives and within a broadly functional–typological approach to the understanding of the dynamics of language. Specific questions addressed are the following: • Measurability of gender complexity: What are the dimensions of gender complexity, and what kind of metrics do we need to study the complexity of gender cross-linguistically? Are there complexity trade-offs between gender and other kinds of nominal classification systems? Does gender complexity diminish or increase un- der the pressure of external factors related to the social ecology of speech communities? • Gender complexity and stability: How does gender complexity evolve and change over time? To what extent do the gender systems of closely related languages differ in terms of their complexity and in which cases do these differences challenge the idea of gender as a stable feature? How complex are incipient gender systems? • Typologically rare gender systems and complexity: How do instances of typologically rare gender systems relate to complex- ity? What tools of analysis are needed to disentangle and describe these complexities? Discussion around these topics was initiated during a two-day workshop on “Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity” that took place at the Depart- ment of Linguistics at Stockholm University, Sweden, November 20–21, 2015. Most chapters included in the two volumes are based on papers first presented and discussed during this workshop. However, some additional authors came on board after the workshop and all contributions went through considerable modifications on their way to being included in the collection of articles. There- sult consists of 14 chapters (including this introduction) in two volumes, which address the questions listed above, while investigating the many facets of gram- matical gender through the prism of linguistic complexity. The chapters discuss what counts as complex or simple in gender systems, and whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages 2 relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. The contributions demonstrate how the complexity of gender systems can be stud- ied synchronically, both in individual languages and across large cross-linguistic samples, as well as diachronically, by exploring how gender systems change over time. Organization of the two volumes The first volume, Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity I: General issues and specific studies (henceforth referred to as Volume I), consists of three chap-
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