Noun classification systems in Africa between gender and nominal declension
Funded by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Duration: March 2017 – February 2020
Principal investigator
Staff
Sophie Achenbach (student assistent)
Julius Elstermann (student assistent)
Associated researchers
Viktoria Apel (Atlantic languages)
Dr. Ulrich Kleinewillinghöfer (Adamawa languages)
Project description
Understanding ‘gender’ as noun classification combined with grammatical agreement, the project will investigate gender and its relation to declension in African languages. It starts out from the approach developed by Güldemann (2000 et al.), which uses four analytical core concepts: (i) Agreement class, (ii) Gender (class), (iii) Noun (form) class, and (iv) Declension class. All these concepts are interdependent but nevertheless must be separated strictly in description and analysis.
Apart from a planned typological component which is not pursued in the first phase of the project, the main objective is the historical-comparative analysis and the reconstruction of gender systems in Niger-Kordofanian on different genealogical levels. The research in this group is traditionally biased towards a partly deficient approach, originating in Bantu studies, to conflate agreement and noun form classes under the philological concept of “noun class.” This has resulted in incomplete or even inappropriate reconstructions of gender systems in other families and their partly misleading evaluation in typological gender research. In order to improve the reconstruction of earlier language states, the above cross-linguistically uniform approach, which deals with gender and noun declension separately and ensures the comparability of systems, is applied. The historical-comparative analysis together with the consideration of areal distributions and language contact is hoped to also shed light on the still enigmatic history of the largest language family on an African and global level.
The first project phase deals with five geographical pools of Niger-Congo with functioning gender and associated declension systems and a wide geographical and genealogical spread.
1. Benue-Kwa (except Bantoid, 8): Cross River, Kainji-Platoid, Idomoid (Eloyi), Edoid, Ukaan, Ghana-Togo-Mountains, Potou-Tano, Ega
2. Gur (8): (Central) Gur, Kulangoic, Samuic, Tiefo, Viemo, Tusian, Senufo, Miyobe
3. Adamawa (4): Tula-Waja, Longuda, Bena-Mboi, Samba-Duru
4. Atlantic (7): (Narrow) Atlantic, Mel, Gola, Limba, Sua, Nalu, Rio Nunez
5. Ubangi (1): Mbaic