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Gender and Its Interaction with Number and Evaluative Morphology an Intra- and Intergenealogical Typological Survey of Africa

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Gender and Its Interaction with Number and Evaluative Morphology an Intra- and Intergenealogical Typological Survey of Africa Francesca Di Garbo Francesca Gender and its interaction with number and evaluative morphology An intra- and intergenealogical typological survey of Africa Francesca Di Garbo Gender and its interaction with number and evaluative morphology with number and evaluative Gender and its interaction Doctoral Thesis in Linguistics at Stockholm University, Sweden 2014 Gender and its interaction with number and evaluative morphology An intra- and intergenealogical typological survey of Africa Francesca Di Garbo Gender and its interaction with number and evaluative morphology An intra- and intergenealogical typological survey of Africa Francesca Di Garbo c Francesca Di Garbo, Stockholm 2014 ISBN 978-91-7447-952-2 Printed in Sweden by US-AB, Stockholm 2014 Distributor: Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University Cover design: Paolo Cerva Map design: Ljuba Veselinova Calipso: Tu che hai visto l’Oceano, i mostri e l’Eliso, potrai ancora riconoscere le case, le tue case? Odisseo: Tu stessa hai detto che porto l’isola in me. Cesare Pavese, I dialoghi con Leuc`o Abstract This dissertation investigates the interactions between gender and number and gender and eval- uative morphology in a sample of 100 African languages, and provides a method for assessing the role that these interactions play in the grammatical complexity of gender systems. Within the sampling space of one continental area, namely, Africa, in-depth studies of genealogically related languages are combined with large-scale comparison across unrelated genealogical units. The dissertation is organised around three main research foci. First, the dissertation provides a systematic overview of patterns of interaction between gender and number along the following dimensions: exponence, syncretism, indexation, correlations in type of marking, and semantic interactions through gender assignment. Several of these patterns are identified, and the dissertation provides examples of their distribution across the languages of the sample. The study provides evidence for the possibility that, similar to the verbal domain, nominal features are also organised in a relevance hierarchy and that this can be studied by looking at nominal features as encoded both on nouns and on indexing targets. In addition, the study shows that, in languages with sex-based gender, gender and number may compete through indexation patterns and that animacy and/or lexical plurality play a crucial role in the expansion of the domains of use of special patterns of plural indexation. The study also shows that the development of pervasive indexation systems in the languages of Africa tends to always involve both gender and number. Finally, the study shows how gender assignment can be used as a means for encoding variation in the countability properties of nouns and noun phrases. Second, the dissertation provides a systematic overview of patterns of interaction between gen- der and evaluative morphology in the languages of the sample. Two major types of interactions are found, and their occurrence depends on whether or not languages have dedicated diminutive and augmentative genders. The study shows that the distribution of the two types depends on three factors: (1) the type of gender system (sex-based vs. non-sex-based), (2) the number of gender distinctions and (3) the possibility of assigning the same noun to more than one gender. Third, the dissertation investigates the role that interactions of gender and number and gen- der and evaluative morphology play in the absolute complexity of gender systems. The study proposes a metric for gender complexity and uses this metric to compute complexity scores for each of the gendered languages of the sample. The results suggest that the gender systems of the languages of the sample lean toward high complexity scores, that languages from the same genealogical units tend to have the same or similar complexity scores, and that the distribution of the outliers can often be understood as the result of language contact. Finally, this dissertation provides an insight into the advantages of looking at nominal features through their morphosyntactic and semantic interactions rather than as isolated domains of grammar. Contents List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Abbreviations xiii Acknowledgements xvii 1 Introduction 1 2 Background: gender, number, evaluative morphology and relevant interac- tions 3 2.1 Gender...................................... 3 2.1.1 Genderassignment........................... 4 2.1.2 The morphosyntax of gender: indexation . 7 2.1.2.1 Beyond agreement: the notion of indexation and what wegainwithit........................ 7 2.1.2.2 Patterns of gender indexation . 9 2.1.3 The function, distribution and diachrony of gender systems . 14 2.1.3.1 Thefunctionofgender . 14 2.1.3.2 The distribution and stability of gender systems . 15 2.1.3.3 The diachrony of gender . 15 2.2 Number ..................................... 18 2.2.1 Countability properties of nouns and noun phrases . 18 2.2.2 Types of number systems and number values . 20 2.2.2.1 Generalnumber .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 20 2.2.2.2 Obligatory number marking and possible number values . 22 2.2.3 Number marking and the Animacy Hierarchy . 22 2.2.4 The morphosyntax of number: indexation . 23 2.2.5 Distribution and diachrony of number systems . 25 2.2.5.1 The distribution of number systems . 25 2.2.5.2 Sourcesofnumber . 25 2.3 Evaluativemorphology. 26 2.3.1 The semantics, pragmatics and functions of evaluative markers . 27 2.3.2 Types of marking in evaluative morphology . 29 2.3.2.1 Phonetic iconicity in evaluative morphology: universal orlanguage-specific?. 29 iii Contents 2.3.2.2 Morphosyntactic encoding of evaluative markers . 30 2.3.3 Distribution and diachrony of evaluative markers . 31 2.3.3.1 The distribution of evaluative markers . 31 2.3.3.2 The diachrony of evaluative markers . 32 2.4 Gender and its interaction with number and evaluative morphology . 32 2.5 The interaction between gender and number: state of the art . 33 2.5.1 Exponence ............................... 34 2.5.2 Syncretism ............................... 35 2.5.3 Cumulative exponence, syncretism and relevance hierarchies . 37 2.5.4 The interaction between gender and number in the languages of Africa .................................. 38 2.6 The interaction between gender and evaluative morphology: state of the art........................................ 39 2.7 Grammatical complexity of gender systems . 40 2.8 Researchquestions ............................... 43 2.9 Summaryofthechapter ............................ 44 3 Method: language sampling, data collection and organization 45 3.1 Samplingmethodology.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 45 3.2 African languages: genealogical classification . 47 3.3 African languages: large-scale language contact . 52 3.4 Samplingprocedure .............................. 53 3.5 Data collection and organization . 58 3.6 Summaryofthechapter ............................ 59 4 Gender, number and evaluative morphology in the languages of the sample: an overview 61 4.1 Introduction................................... 61 4.2 Gender...................................... 61 4.2.1 Criteria of classification of gender systems: summary . 69 4.2.2 Sex-basedgender............................ 71 4.2.3 Non-sex-basedgender . 74 4.2.3.1 Noun Classes in Bantu . 76 4.2.3.2 Noun classes in Atlantic . 78 4.3 Number ..................................... 81 4.3.1 Generalnumber ............................ 87 4.3.2 Tripartitenumbersystems. 89 4.4 Evaluativemorphology. 91 4.5 Summaryofthechapter ............................ 93 5 Gender and number 95 5.1 Introduction................................... 95 iv Contents 5.2 Cumulation ................................... 97 5.2.1 Cumulation between gender and number: results . 98 5.2.1.1 Cumulative encoding of gender and number with all the indexes ............................100 5.2.1.2 Cumulative encoding of gender and number with some indexes ............................101 5.2.1.3 Noncumulative encoding of gender and number on the indexingtargets . .102 5.2.1.4 Cumulation between gender and number on nouns . 105 5.2.1.5 Summary...........................109 5.3 Syncretism ...................................109 5.3.1 Syncretism of gender in the context of number: results . 110 5.3.2 Semanticization of gender distinctions under syncretism . 113 5.3.3 Summary ................................116 5.4 Cumulation and syncretism: summary and discussion . 117 5.4.1 Cumulation, syncretism, and grammatical complexity . 117 5.4.2 Syncretism and relevance hierarchy for nominal features . 117 5.5 Splitpluralindexationsystems . .118 5.5.1 Animacy-based uses of Dedicated Plural Indexation . 119 5.5.2 Dedicated Plural Indexation in Cushitic . 121 5.5.2.1 Introduction . .121 5.5.2.2 The distribution of DPI in the Cushitic sample . 122 5.5.2.3 Two peculiar languages within the Cushitic sample: Kam- baataandDaasanach . .128 5.5.3 Discussion................................128 5.6 Presenceofgenderandtypeofnumbermarking. 130 5.7 Gender shifts and semantic interactions between gender and number . 134 5.7.1 Gender shifts, number/countability in Bantu and North-Central Atlantic .................................136 5.7.2 Gender shifts, number/countability in Berber, Semitic and Eastern Nilotic..................................139 5.7.3 Gender shifts and semantic interactions between gender and num- ber:summary..............................141 5.8 Summaryofthechapter . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..142 6 Gender and evaluative morphology
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