Issues in noun classification and noun class assignment in Gujjolay Eegimaa (Banjal) and other Joola languages (original) (raw)
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Cognitive Linguistics, 2012
This paper investigates the semantic bases of class membership in the noun class system of Gújjolaay Eegimaa (Eegimaa henceforth), a Niger-Congo and Atlantic language of the BAK group spoken in Southern Senegal. The question of whether semantic principles underlie the overt classification of nouns in Niger-Congo languages is a controversial one. There is a common perception of Niger-Congo noun class systems as being mainly semantically arbitrary. The goal of the present paper is to show that physical properties and culture-specific factors are central principles of semantic categorisation in the Eegimaa noun class system. I argue that the Eegimaa overt grammatical classification of nouns into classes is a semantic categorisation system whereby categories are structured according to prototypicality, family resemblance, metaphorical and metonymic extensions and chaining processes, as argued within the framework of Cognitive Linguistics. I show that the categorisation of entities in th...
Anomalies in the Noun Class Systems of Niger-Congo: Towards a Typology of the Atypical
https://iling-ran.ru/library/languageinafrica/4/LiA\_4\_1\_1.pdf, 2023
The paper focuses on minor noun classes and minor genders in Niger-Congo languages, which are usually regarded as anomalies in class systems. It takes into consideration data from 243 languages, and shows that such anomalies are most characteristic for quite specific meanings, namely those traditionally regarded as prototypical meanings of noun classes: ‘person’, ‘thing’, ‘foot’, ‘tree’, ‘eye’, ‘place’, etc. Thus, the particular patterns of class agreement observed, or particular correlations between singular and plural noun classes, often do not represent accidental exceptions, but are better thought of as a kind of marker of noun class paradigmatic semantics.
International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 2014
Noun classification is one of the prime markings of any Bantu language. It is characterized by the categorization of nouns into noun classes which often pair into singular and plural pairings. These classes are often marked with a numbering system. Suba language being a Bantu language has a noun class system typical of the other Bantu languages and because the language has hardly any evidence of a description of any aspect of its grammar this study seeks to describe this significant aspect of it, laying emphasis on the role of syntax in the morphological structure of the noun. The study took a qualitative approach with the descriptive research design. It was guided by the theory of distributed morphology introduced in 1993 by Morris Halle and Alec Marantz. The theory demonstrates the inter-relatedness between the various components of grammar (phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics). Data was collected in Mfangano Island, which is a homogeneous set up of Suba indigenous people. A sample of forty elders was purposively selected to provide the data. Focus group discussion and elicitation methods were used to collect a corpus of the Suba language which was recorded through audio taping and field notes. The recorded data was then analyzed using the item-and-arrangement approach of morphological structure analysis. This revealed that the classification of the Olusuba noun into a class is motivated by both the morpholosyntactic realization of the noun and the semantics of the noun.
A typological overview of Eegimaa (Jóola Banjal)
Studies in African Linguistics, 2019
This paper presents some of the most prominent properties of Eegimaa, a Jóola/Diola2 language spoken in the Basse-Casamance (Southern Senegal). The phonological features examined include [ATR] vowel harmony, backness harmony, lenition, and Eegimaa’s typologically unusual geminate consonants. Most of the paper, however, focuses on Eegimaa morphology. My analysis of the noun class system separates morphological classes from agreement classes (genders), and presents the most important principles of semantic categorization, including shape encoding. I also show that Eegimaa classifies nouns and verbs by the same overt linguistic means, namely, noun class prefixes. I argue that this overt classification of nouns and verbs reflects parallel semantic categorization of entities and events. Other prominent typological features include associative plural marking and nominal TAM marking with the inactualis suffix, which also expresses alienability contrasts.
Noun classes in African and Amazonian languages: Towards a comparison
Linguistic Typology, 2004
Many Amazonian systems of nominal classification have been perceived as constituting a descriptive and typological challenge. The proposal presented here is to consider many of them as emerging noun class systems rather than as a-typical systems that defy integration within an overall typology of nominal classification, at the opposite end from the Niger-Congo systems on a continuum of grammaticalization. First the African noun class systems are reviewed, with an emphasis on the sociolinguistic context of their descriptions and on their common deviations from a prototypical image of them projected in the general linguistic literature. Then a recapitulation of various proposals of atypicality of the Amazonian systems is given, followed by the presentation of a typology of nominal classification systems that integrates the dynamic dimension of grammaticalization. The application of this typological framework is illustrated with a case study from the Miraña language of Colombia.
Niger-Congo "noun classes'" conflate gender with deriflection
2019
This paper reviews the treatment of gender systems in Niger-Congo languages. Our<br> discussion is based on a consistent methodological approach, to be presented in §1,<br> which employs four analytical concepts, namely agreement class, gender, nominal<br> form class, and deriflection and which, as we argue, are applicable within Niger-<br> Congo and beyond. Due to the strong bias toward the reconstruction of Bantu and<br> wider Benue-Congo, Niger-Congo gender systems tend to be analyzed by means of<br> a philologically biased and partly inadequate approach that is outlined in §2. This<br> framework assumes in particular a consistent alliterative one-to-one mapping of<br> agreement and nominal form classes conflated under the philological concept of<br> "noun class". One result of this is that gender systems are recurrently deduced<br> merely from the number-mapping of nominal form classes in the nominal deri-<...
Nuba Mountains Language Studies, 2018
Tagoi, a Niger-Congo language belonging to the Rashad language group has a noun class system in which the majority of nouns are marked for number (singular and plural) by paired prefixes. Some nouns are marked by additional suffixes for plural. Stevenson (1956-57) identified eight noun classes for Tagoi using a Bantuist approach of classifying nouns in relation to their semantic correlations. Nouns with zero prefix and nouns whose agreement prefixes do not match the class prefix, however, are difficult to assign to the appropriate classes, and therefore are considered by Stevenson to be variants of other classes. The present paper, in the light of new data, reclassifies the Tagoi nouns using an alternative recent approach proposed by Corbett (1991: 45). It provides a method based on agreement evidence and following both semantic and morphological assignment rules. This method enables us to set out all nouns, including irregular nouns like zero prefix nouns and others, and to assign them to the appropriate classes.
A corpus-driven account of the noun classes and genders in Northern Sotho
Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2016
This article offers a distributional corpus analysis of the Northern Sotho noun and gender system. The aim is twofold: first, to assess whether the existing descriptions of the noun class system in Northern Sotho are corroborated by information provided by the analysis of a large electronic corpus for this language, with specific reference to singular-plural pairings, and second, to present a number of novel visualisation aids to characterise a noun class system (in a radar diagram) and a noun gender system (using a two-directional weighted representation) for Northern Sotho in particular, and for any Bantu language in general. The findings include the discovery of two new genders in Northern Sotho (i.e. class pairs 1/6 and 3/10), and also indicate that the Northern Sotho noun class system, and by extension any one for Bantu, should be seen as dynamic.