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The dynamics of gender complexity ...
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Abstract:
In this chapter we view grammatical gender as a category type that emerges, evolves and disappears in languages as a result of diachronic processes and whose complex- ity grows and diminishes through time (§1–§2). Traditional approaches to gram- matical gender focus on two properties that already presuppose a high degree of maturity of gender systems: noun classes and agreement. Here we conceive of gen- der rather as a category type with a semantic core of animacy and/or sex reflecting classes of referents, which have a propensity to turn into classes of noun lexemes. When growing and retracting, gender characteristically follows the animacy or in- dividuation hierarchy. However, this hierarchical patterning breaks down when animacy leaks into the inanimate domain led astray by many different associative pathways, which is why lexical organization according to noun classes has to be invoked to maintain some sort of order (§3). Gender manifests itself in the form of marking on noun-associated words, often ...
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Keyword:
agreement; animacy; areal linguistics; complexity; gender; historical linguistics; language ecology; number; pluralia tantum; system emergence
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URL: https://zenodo.org/record/3462784
https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3462784
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