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Noun Categorization: A
Comprehensive Typology
.Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Jawun Research Institute, Central
Queensland University
Almost all of the languages of the
world have some noun categorization
devices in their grammar. The most
widespread is linguistic genders —
grammatical classes of nouns based
on core semantic properties such as
sex (female and male), animacy,
humanness, and also shape and size.
Numeral classifiers categorise the
noun referent in terms of its inherent
nature, animacy, shape and form, and
occur with a number word or a
quantifier. Further types of noun
categorization include noun
classifiers, possessive classifiers,
verbal classifiers, and a number of
rarer types (locative and deictic
classifiers). Noun categorization
devices cover a range of types from
the large systems of numeral
classifiers in South-East Asia to the
highly grammaticalised gender
agreement classes in Indo-European
languages. Each type of noun
categorization device has its preferred
semantic parameters. One can
develop from another. All of them
provide a unique insight into how
people categorise the world through
their language in terms of universal
semantic parameters involving
humanness, animacy, sex, shape,
form, consistency, and functional
properties. In one language, a human
will be classified in terms of
orientation, as 'vertical', in another as
male or female, and in another one as
simply animate, or 'rational'. In a
number of languages, the same, or
almost the same, set of classifiers is
used in multiple contexts — with
number words, with deictics, in
possessive constructions, and so on.
This points towards the unity of noun
categorization via classifiers. There is
no evidence for the synchoric primacy
of any of the multiple contexts.
Diachronically, they may display
distinct pathways of development,
and undergo language obsolescence
at different rates.
Gender and various types of
classifiers share discourse functions,
and are never semantically
redundant. Gender and classifiers can
refer anaphorically to a previously
mentioned entity and serve as
referent-tracking devices. They
change as the society changes,
reflecting the ways in which language
and social environment are integrated
into a single whole. The meanings,
the uses, the acquisition, and
dissolution of noun categorization
offer a window into into how the world
is seen through language, revealing
the workings of the human mind and
its cognitive capacities.
ISBN 9783969392591 (Hardbound).
LINCOM Studies in Language
Typology 35. 698pp. 2026.fugiat,
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