Gender oli oy ey Pal 2) ial nn 2} il z GREVILLE CORBETT i | | Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics WillGender is a fascinating category, central and pervasive in some languages and totally absent in others. In this new, comprehensive account of gender systems, over 200 larguages are discussed, from English and Russian to Arehi and Chichewa. Detailed analysis of individual languages provides clear illustrations of specific types of system. The basis of gender distinction, its reflection in syntax, and areas of special interest such as “hybrid” nouns are all presented in a lively way. Gender will be invaluable both for class use and as a reference resource for students and researchers in linguisticsCAMBRIDGE TEXTBOOKS IN LINGUISTICS General Burs: . COMRIE, C3. FILLMORE, BLASS, .LIGHT#OOT, LLLYONS, 9 MATTHEWS, POSNER, S ROMAINE, N.V-SMITH, GENDERInti sere. Pont MaTritews Morpholoay 1B COMRIE Aspect IM REMPSON Semantic Theory TAYNON Historical Linguistics HALLWOOD, LG, ANDERSON, 6.DAHL Lage t Linguists .m ey The Physics of Speech A. HUDEON Sociolinguistics 1K. CHAMBERS and P- T2UDGILL Dialetology AJLELUIOT Child Language PAL MATTHEWS Syma ‘A RaDrORD Transformational Syntax Laven Eiglish Word-formation Sc. LeVINSON Pragmatics O.BROWS and 0. YULE Discourse Analyt R HUDDLESTON Iirodutio fo the Granmar of English LASS Phonology ‘8 comase Tense ‘W.RLEIN Second Language Acquisition A-cRUTTENDEN Intonation N iowoops, p.rLETcHER and A, HUGHES Staistis br Language Studies DLALERUSE Levial Semanties Pm PALMER Mood and Modaliy ‘A RADFORD Transformational Grammar MLGARMAN Piyeholingustes \w.cROFT Typology and Universals 0.6, conBET” Gender GENDER GREVILLE G. CORBETT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE NEW YORK PORT CHESTER MELBOURNE SYDNEYPublished by the Pres Syndicate ofthe University of Cambridge ‘The Pitt Building, Trumpington Sweet, Cambridge CB2 [RP 40 West 20th Stucet, New York, NY T0011, USA To Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia (© Cambridge University Press 1991 First published 1991 Printed in Groat Bitain by the University Pr, Cambridge Brish Library cataloguing n publication data Corbet, Greville G. ‘Gender. ~ (Cambridge textbooks in Unguisties). 1. Languages. Grammar. Gender 1. Tile ais “Library of Congress cataloguing in pulieaion data Corbet, Greville G Gender / Greville G. Corbett p.m. (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics) ISBN 0.521-32939-6.- ISBN 0-52-33845-X (pbk) |, Grammar, Comparative and general Gender. 1. Seve. P240,7.C87 1991 415-ae20- 9033171 CIP ISBN 0 521 32939 6 hardback ISBN 0 521 33865 X paperback For Judith, David, Ian and PeterLt 12 13 24 2a 212 22 22.1 222 223 224 225 226 23 24 31 Bd 312 313 32 CONTENTS List of figures age xiii List of tables Preface List of abbreviations INTRODUCTION Gender in the languages of the world General approach and outline of the book Presentation of data (GENDER ASSIGNMENT I: SEMANTIC SYSTEMS Strict semantic systems ‘Tamil and other Dravidian languages Other strict semantic systems Predominantly semantic systems Zande Dyjrbal Ket Ojibwa and other Algonquian languages Lak and other Caucasian languages Other partially semantic systems The criteria on which semantic systems are based Conclusion GENDER ASSIGNMENT Il: FORMAL SYSTEMS ‘Morphological systems Russian ‘Swahili and other Bantu languages “The features on which morphological systems are based Phonological systems n 2B 4 Is 9 sBes 32 33 4 4 43 49 SIContents Contents 32.1 Qatar st 3.22 Hausa ie 6 ESTABLISHING THE NUMBER OF GENDERS 145 3.2.3 Godie and other Kru languages 3 641 Terms 146 3.24 Yimas 55 6.2 Agreement classes 7 325 French 3 63 Controller genders and target genders 150 3.2.6 The features on which phonological systems are based 2 6.3.1 The relation of gender and number 154 3.3 General characteristics of assignment systems @ 63.2 Relation to semantics 158 3.3.1 Overt and covert gender ee 633 The relation of controller genders to target genders 159 3.32 Overlapping of assignment erteria 6 64 The maximalist problem 161 3.33 Problematic nouns « 64.1 Subgenders 161 34 Conctusion 5 6.42 Overdifferentated targets and pronominal gender systems 168 4 Hie PSYCHOLINGUISTIC STATUS OF GENDER ASSIGNMENT 70 6.443 Inquorate genders 170 4.1 Borrowings 0 6.444 Defective nouns 175 4.1.1 Assignment of borrowings by normal rules n 6.4.5 Consistent agreement patterns 176 4.1.2 Claims for special assignment rules 8 6.4.6 Combined gender systems 184 42 Child language acquisition 82 65 Conclusion 188 43. Experimental evidence 89 44 Residual meaning of gender 2 17 TARGET GENDERS: SYNCRETISM AND ENFORCED GENDER 45 Diachronie evidence 7 Forus 189 46 Conelusion 104 7.1 Gender and number 189 7.1.1 Syneretism: further examples of convergent and crossed 5 GENDER AGREEMENT 103 systems 190 5.1 Elements showing gender agreement 106 TL.2 Types of syncretism 194 52 The form of gender agreement us 7.1.3 Diachronic implications 198 52.1 The morphology of gender agreement us 7.2 Neutral agreement 203 5.22 Allterative concord "7 7.2.1 The problem 204 52.3 A complex example: Khinalug 19 7.2.2 Strategy 1: the use of a regular gender/mumber form 205 5.3 Limits on gender agreement 13 7.23 Strategy 2: the use of a unique neutral agreement form 214 5.3.1 Syntactic restrictions 14 7.24 Extension of use of neutral agreement forms 216 5.3.2 Interaction with tense 125 7.25 Neutral agreement: summing up 217 5.3.3 Interaction with person 16 73 Gender agreement with noun phrases involving 5.34 Interaction with number 132 reference problems 218 5.3.5 Interaction with case 12 73:1 Use of one possible form by convention 219 5.3.6 Morphological class 13 732 Use of an ‘evasive’ form 221 5.3.7 Phonological constraints 4 733 Use of a special form 23 5.3.8 Lexical restrictions 134 134 No strategy 2s 54 Lack of agreement: classifiers 16 7.4 Conclusion 23 5.5 The gaining and losing of gender agreement 1 5.6 Conclusion 13 {8 RYARID NOUNS AND THE AGREEMENT HIERARCHY 225 8.1 The Agreement Hierarchy 225Contents Bal B12 82 83 84 91 oad 92 9.13 92 92.1 9.2.2 93 94 9s 96 9.6.1 9.62 97 98 10 10.1 10.1.1 0.1.2 10.2 1021 10.2.2 10.23 103 103.1 1032 1033 Data Wider considerations Personal pronouns Diachrony Conclusion (GENDER RESOLUTION RULES Features requiring resolution Person resolution ‘Number resolution Gender resolution ‘The application of resolution rules Agreement with one conjunct, Factors favouring resolution Semantic gender resolution Syntactic gender resolution ‘Mixed semantic and syntactic gender resolution Strategies for gender resolution Markedness: an inadequate motivation ‘Semantic justification and clear marking of plurality Diachrony Conclusion (GENERALIZATIONS AND PROSPECTS Meaning and form A perspective on gender systems Earlier research on gender Diachrony ‘The rise of gender systems ‘The development of gender systems ‘The decline of gender systems Prospects Descriptive studies The function of gender Collaborative work References Author index. Language index ‘Subject index 226 236 2a 248 259 261 262 262 263 268 264 265 267 269 219 284 290 290 293 299 306 307 307 307 308 310 310 312 35 318 319 320 323 324 352 357 361 31 32 33 34 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68. 69 6.10 6.1 6.12 613 614 615 6.16 6.17 618 1 12 13 14 18 16 1 784 FIGURES Russian declensional types Sex-differentiable nouns in Russian ‘The gender pattern of Russian Gender assignment in Russian ‘The gender system of Rumanian ‘The gender system of French Verbal agreement forms in Telugu ‘Telugu personal pronouns ‘The gender system of Lak ‘Target genders in French Target genders in German ‘Target genders in Tamil ‘Target genders in Chibemba ‘The gender system of Lak ‘The gender system of Slovene ‘The gender system of Archi ‘The gender system of Serbo-Croat Genders and subgenders in Russian TThe gender system of Russian ‘Agreement classes in Tsova-Tush Gender in Tsova-Tush (excluding inquorate genders) Agreement classes in Lelemi Gender in Hausa ‘Target genders in Chamalal Target genders in Fula ‘The gender system of Seneca ‘The gender system of Upper Sorbian Gender syncretism ‘Target genders in Zande Gender in Andi: conservative dialects (type A) page 37 38 9 4 152 152 133 133 154 155 Iss 155 156 157 157 158 165 167 167 m m2, m4 190 19 191 192 193 194 194 198List of figures 788 78C 18D 19 710 mi 12 13 8 82 Gender in Andi: dialect type B Gender in Andi: Rikvani dialect (type C) Gender in Andi: dialect type D Development of gender in Grebo Loss of class ten agreement in the Ngemba group Gender in Tamil Gender in Telugu Gender in Kolami Evidence for the Agreement Hierarchy Agreement with Russian hybrid nouns (by age of speaker) 199 199 200 200 201 202 202 203 237 251 24 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 3.10 41 42 43 4a 4s 3 52 53 sa 35 56 57 TABLES Assignment in Tamil Assignment in Zande Genders in Dyirbal ‘Assignment in Dyirbal Genders in Ket Assignment in Lak Genders IIT and TV in Atehi Contrasts between genders II and TV in Archi Assignment in Russian (semantic criteria only) [Examples from the semantic residue in Russian ‘Noun paradigms in Russian ‘Outline of Swahili gender forms Personal pronouns in Godie Assignment of inanimates in Godie Semantic assignment in Yimas Phonological assignment in Yimas Gender assignment in French Non-attested system of conflicting assignment rules ‘The distribution of nouns in Russian by gender Loans entering the masculine gender in Russian ‘Assignment of invented nouns to gender in French Gender, perception of attributes and personification in German and English Kikuyu nouns used in the triad test First type of gender/number markers in Khinalug ‘The verb k'V ‘die’ in Khinalug Second type of gender/number markers in Khinalug Third type of gender/number markers in Khinalug Imperative of *be’ in Khhinalug Pronominal gender/number markers in Khinalug “Cause to forget’ in Khinalug (past concrete) page 9 15 6 19 a 28 35 35 36 a1 3 3s 56 39 6 8 8 31 96 7 120 120 121 121 11 12 123List of tables 58 39 5.10 sal 5.12 5.13 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 6.10 61 uM 12 73 14 1 16 71 18 19 7:10 m1 8 91 92 93 94 98 96 97 98 99 10.1 Personal pronouns in Shilha Second person pronouns in Diuxi Mixtec ‘Third person pronouns in Diuxi Mixtec Some singular forms of Russian éor ‘this’ Gender agreement of Latin adjectives Noun prefixes and gender agreement markers in ‘Neangikurrunggurr Attributive agreement in Serbo-Croat Predicate agreement in Serbo-Croat Auributive agreement in Russian Inquorate genders in Serbo-Croat Main agreement classes in Lelemi ‘Agreement forms in Yimas Agreement patterns in Russian Consistent agreement patterns in English Agreement with vraé and similar nouns in Russian Personal pronouns in Mba Consistent agreement patterns in Mba Target gender forms in Upper Sorbian Verb agreement markers in Qafar ‘The associative particle in Bayso ‘The definite article in Somali Agreement markers in the Rendille possessive construction Predicate agreement markers in Serbo-Croat, ‘Agreement markers in Khinalug (type 2) Loss of class ten agreement in the Ngemba group Gender agreement in Lak Personal pronouns in Godie Patterns of syncretism in Bayso and Qatar Evidence for the Agreement Hierarchy Agreement with conjoined noun phrases (controller factors) ‘Agreement with conjoined noun phrases (target factors) Predicate agreement forms in Slovene Predicate agreement forms in Polish Agreement markers in Slovene Agreement markers in Polish Agreement markers in Latin Agreement markers in Icelandic Predicate agreement forms in Serbo-Croat ‘Target gender forms in Chamalal (Gigat!’ dialect) 130 130 130 1B2 1B3 140 102 163 166 re 174 176 178 180 184 185 187 193 195 195 196 197 197 198 201 208 210 au 235 267 268 280 284 295 296 298 298 299 3s PREFACE ‘This book has required a great deal of informant work and many hours of consultation with experts on particular languages and language groups. It is a pleasure to record my gratitude to all those who have been generous with their time and expertise, in providing examples or references, discussing data, ‘or commenting on parts of the book: Jean Aitchison, Keith Allen, Gunilla ‘Anderman, R.E. Asher, Stephen Barbour, Michael Barlow, Ruth Berman, Catherine Chvany, Ulrike Claudi, Joseph Clements, Richard Coates, N. E, Collinge, Francis Cornish, Merton Dagut, Anna Morpurgo Davies, Margaret Deuchar, R. M.W. Dixon, Donka Farkas, William Foley, Ives Goddard, Nigel Gotteri, Joseph Greenberg, Dick Hayward, Bernd Heins, Eugénie Henderson, Richard Hogg, Dee Ann Holisky, Dick Hudson, Jim Hurford, Larry Hyman, Ewa Jaworska, A.A. Kibrik, Ewan Klein, AL Koval, Graham Mallinson, Naomi Martin, Igor Mel@uk, Anne Mills, Ngessimo Mutaka, Yoni Neeman, Almerindo Ojeda, John Payne, David Perlmutter, Rebecca Posner, Malathi Rao, Bob Rothstein, Linda Schwarz, Roland Sussex, Karen Taylor-Browne, and W. A. A. Wilson. F_R. Palmer, who has read and commented on each draft chapter, deserves special thanks, Naturally, those listed do not necessarily agree with my analyses. Graphic representations area great help in giving a clear account of some parts of the topic, and I am ‘grateful to Ian Clark, Annie Read and Kevin Shaughnessy for artwork. Some ‘examples with numerous diacritics almost required artwork to0, so the word- processing skills of Carole D'Arcy, Pauline Rayner and Philippe Galloway were appreciated, Finally I would like to thank the team at Cambridge University Press, especially Penny Carter, Marion Smith, Judith Ayling and Jenny Potts for their helpfulness and expertise. ‘The book is based in part on research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, reference number C00232218. This support is gratefully acknowledged. Chapter 6 includes a considerably reworced version (of Corbett (1989). Oxford University Press have kindly given permission for the use of artwork from that paper, as have Routledge to reproduce figure 8.2,Preface taken from Corbett (19832). Section 7.2 is appearing separately as Corbett (forthcoming a), and Chapter 9 takes some of its material from Corbett (19836). The version here supersedes previous ones, and the integration of the material into @ general account of gender is new. nee. bat DEF mR Loe Mase ABBREVIATIONS accusative Nec ‘agreement marker Nevr animate Now auxiliary Np dative ony definite cs cergative Poss feminine RES future EFL genitive so inanimate suas instrumental Isr locative 2xo masculine 3D masculine personal negative neuter nominative noun phrase object plural possessive present reflexive singular subject first person. second person third person1 Introduction Gender is the most puzzling of the grammatical categories. Its tepic which interests non-linguists as well as linguists and it becomes more fascinating the more it is investigated. In some languages gender is central and pervasive, while in others it-is totally absent. One of its attractions for linguists is that there are interesting aspects of the study of gender in each of the core areas of linguistics. And work on it promises practical benefits, even in the short term, in meeting the problems which gender causes in seconé-language learning, In the longer term, research into gender will be important for at least two other areas: first, it can shed light on the way in which linguistic information is stored in the brain; and second, it has implications for natural language processing, notably for the elimination of local ambiguities in parsing. To understand what linguists mean by ‘gender’. a good starting point is Hockett’s definition: ‘Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior ‘of associated words” (1958: 231). A language may have two or more such classes or genders. The classification frequently corresponds to a real distinction of sex, at least in part, but often too it does not (‘gender’ derives etymologically from Latin genus, via Old French gendre, and originally meant “kind” or ‘sort’). The word * gender" is used not just for a group of nouns but also for the whole category; thus we may say that @ particular language has, say, three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter, and that the language has the category of gender. 1.1 Gender in the languages of the world Discussions of gender as a category have tended to centre on relatively small numbers of languages, and often on selections which are not typical of the systems found in the world’s languages. In contrast, we shall look at over 200 languages. Some will appear only briefly, because of some special point of interest, others will run like threads through the bock showing hhow the different aspects of gender systems relate to each other. Grammatical gender is certainly widespread, and so a brief account ofits distritution may 1Introduction | ‘gender (some with three genders, others having reduced the number to two); tcc nr space Us hu om meses Brom Gt | oar ong Eee esa iad in number, show particularly interesting gender systems, which contrast ‘markedly with those of Indo-European. Several ofthe major families of Asia | provide no material for our investigation, but in south India we find the | Dravidian family, which includes languages like Tamil and Telugu, which are of great importance for the typology of gender. Bridging Asia and Africa, the [Afro-Asiatie family offers numerous two-genéer systems, some of which are cof special importance. The other three families of Aftica, namely Nilo- \ Saharan, Niger-Kordofanian and Khoisan, all have languages with gender \ systems, Niget-Kordofanian provides some of the most extensive examples, in \terms of the numbers of genders and the degree to which gender is reflected in syntax, Heine (1982: 190) estimates that 600 African languages (Some two- | ses ofall ftcantanguages) are geade languages. New Guinea has around {1,000 languages, « substantial proportion of the world's languages, and } ender is widespread hete too. In Australia gender io found in various { languages, mainly in those of Arnhem Land and the North Kimberleys | Finally, in the America, the examples of gender lenguages are few and are generally isolated, The most important exception is the Algonquian family, whose two-gende systems wil gure prominently in our study. In comparing data from languages of such variety we must be careful to ensure that we are comparing like with like. To do this we shall be explicit about the techniques used, the sourees of data and, of course, the definitions of the terms we use. 1.2 General approach and outline of the book ‘The book is designed for various types of readers. First, for the student of linguistics, itis an introduction to an area of obvious interest, one which is poorly represented in the standard texts. And through this topic the book attempts to give an insight into the richness and variety of the world’s languages. Second, it is intended to help those doing research on specific languages or groups of languages, whether for an undergraduate dissertation ‘or a major research project. Seeing a familiar language analysed in the broader context of languages with comparable but different systems can give a new perspective on familiar material. For some languages, the accounts of gender 2 1.2 General approach and outline set in their particular grammatical tradition obscure similarities to other genetically distant or unrelated languages. An overview ofthis type seks to highlight such similarities and to suggest new ways of approaching old problems. References to work on specific languages ean be found by checking relevant sections identified using the language index. OF those researching individual languages, feld-workers are a special cetegory. It is hoped thatthe