noun classes & vocabulary

[Vardelm]

I've been looking for some info about how noun classes relate to root words, but without luck so far. I'm speaking about classes as seen in Bantu languages, but also Australian langs. To what extent are noun class affixes derivational? Is a root word often seen using multiple noun classes to indicate different objects/concepts? If you're making a Bantu-style conlang (asking for a friend...) should you generate vocabulary separate from the noun class system and then just add the noun class affixes on depending on what class you assign the root to?

[Pabappa]

Some of my conlangs have noun class prefixes that have a lot in common with those of Bantu languages, but I'm a freestylist, meaning that most of what I do is just based on what feels right, rather than how it works in a particular language in the wild. As a result, I still dont really know much about Bantu languages and cant answer all of your questions.

I can at least confide that my system works, and that words can be copied across noun classes as you say. Quoting from FrathWiki:

New words can be formed by copying a word from one class to another. For example, there exists a word pair of gipihi " sharp tooth; canine" and kipihi "to bite". Thus, a noun became a verb by simply changing the classifier prefix.

For some classes, the entire vocabulary can be assumed to be copiable. As above, gi- nouns denoting body parts pair with ki- verbs denoting the action of striking or hitting something with that body part, and with mi- denoting that body part served as food.

Likewise, the word for a young student, tukuu, is actually derived from the word for book, ikuu, by changing the prefix from i-, which denotes handheld objects, to tu-, which marks the "human children" noun class.

I've had these languages up and working for a very long time, but yet none of them are my main focus, so I don't have anything well developed to show.

[Richard W]

They can certainly be derivational. For example, in Latin, we not only derive feminine adjectives from masculine adjectives by replacing the 2nd declension ending -us by the first declension ending -a, but we can do the same with nouns for people, and even animals with prominent sexes. There are similar patterns for fruit and the trees that bear them - fruit neuter in -um, tree in 2nd declension -us but feminine. Prominent examples are pomum/s for 'apple' and pirum/s for 'pear'. On the other hand, class-marker plus root can be a very stable combination, and take time to switch to something more appropriate.

[dɮ the phoneme]

Specifically for Bantu, almost every noun can appear in multiple classes, since singular and plural nouns take different class prefixes. Of course, this can be argued to just be an artifact of the way linguists label things. Another important fact is that in some Bantu languages (and IIRC this is the situation reconstructed for proto-Bantu), every noun takes two distinct class prefixes: a prefix and a preprefix. Sometimes they're identical, sometimes they're distinct. Locatives are often formed by replacing the preprefix with a locative preprefix, and this is also generally consider to be a distinct noun class.

[xxx]

in an a priori philosophical language, everything is in the primes ...
we can see primes as classes...
each construction belongs to different classes according to the primes which compose it...

[bradrn]

I've been looking for some info about how noun classes relate to root words, but without luck so far. I'm speaking about classes as seen in Bantu languages, but also Australian langs. To what extent are noun class affixes derivational? Is a root word often seen using multiple noun classes to indicate different objects/concepts? If you're making a Bantu-style conlang (asking for a friend...) should you generate vocabulary separate from the noun class system and then just add the noun class affixes on depending on what class you assign the root to?

From Aikhenvald’s book Classifiers (an excellent resource, I recommend it if you want to learn more about these systems):

Variability in noun class assignment is found in systems with semantically transparent noun classes. In Australian languages, nouns with sex-differentiable referents can trigger agreement in accordance with the natural gender (note that the noun class marked on the noun itself remains the same), e.g. Mayali na-garndegin na-rangem (CL:MASC-dingo CL:MASC-male) 'male dingo'; na-garndegin al-daluk (CL:MASC-dingo CL:FEM-female) 'female dingo' (Evans 1997: 128).

Many languages allow variable noun class marking on a number of nouns like 'baby' and 'child', on some kinship terms and some inanimates. … In Ket gender can vary only for inanimates (Dul'son 1968: 62 ff., Krejnovic 1961). Then, for instance, a growing tree is masculine, a cut-down tree is inanimate; an upright tree is masculine, and a tree with a curved trunk is feminine. In languages with shape-based genders spoken in the East Sepik region of New Guinea, change in (covert) gender of most inanimate nouns signals change in shape.

…

Semantic choices may be more complex. Turkana (East Nilotic: Dimmendaal 1983: 220) has three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. By changing the gender of an animate noun, specific reference can be made to a male, female or a young of the species … A number of nouns referring to inanimates allow variable gender. Some have two forms—masculine and feminine, e.g. 'grass' and 'tree'. Masculine forms mean 'growing, green', and feminine forms mean 'dead, dry state' … Some inanimate nouns have three gender forms. The opposition of the three is by size.

…

Change in noun class agreement can be employed to distinguish distinct lexical entries. In Anindilyakwa (Australian) dirija 'dress' is treated as feminine when understood as a piece of female clothing; it is treated as a member of inanimate m-class when seen as a material (Julie Waddy, p.c.).25 These nouns are said to have double or multiple gender, depending on their semantics.

…

Variability in 'overt' noun class marking on the same root is the way of creating new words, in languages with overt noun class marking. In Bantu languages, e.g. Swahili, most stems usually occur with a prefix of one class. Prefixes can be substituted to mark a characteristic of an object. M-zee means 'old person' and has the human class prefix m-. It can be replaced by ki- (inanimate class) to yield ki-zee 'scruffy old person' (Dixon 1982: 166; also see Shepardson 1982 on the correlations between diminution and choice of class prefix in Swahili).

…

In Hebrew, a few nouns can have either feminine or masculine gender, without any change in semantics, e.g. dereh 'road, way', lason 'language', ruah 'spirit, wind'.

…

Some northern Australian languages allow different agreement possibilities for certain nouns depending on the 'viewpoint' from
which the referent is seen (Evans forthcoming: 108). In Gunwinjgu kukku 'water, drink' triggers Class 4 ('neuter') agreement when it is seen as a part of the landscape … When considered a drink, it is assigned to Class 3 (which also covers vegetable food).

(Sorry for the rather long quote, I just wanted to make sure I included everything relevant.)

So, yes, it is certainly possible for noun classes to vary to give different meanings. On the other hand, it sounds like this process is usually fairly lexicalised and non-productive, and the derivations themselves may not necessarily be what you might expect.

[Vardelm]

Thanks for the info so far!

Summary: noun class affixes CAN be derivational.

Let me shift the question a bit: are noun class affixes ALWAYS derivational?

Let's say you have class 1 affix da- "male person" and class 2 affix mu- "female person". A likely situation is that you have a root ban "child", resulting in words daban "boy" and muban "girl". Are there also languages where you did not have ban "child", but instead only had roots like kun "boy" and sin "girl". That would yield words dakun "boy" and musin "girl". Are there languages where not only is that the case, but the roots kun "boy" and sin "girl" are not used in any words except dakun "boy" and musin "girl"?

My assumption at this point is that many to most words would use noun class affixes in a derivational manner. (BTW, I'm not really considering noun classes that indicate a plural as being separate, although I'm aware they exist in Bantu languages.) There would still be some roots or maybe most (but probably not all!) that would be like my boy & girl example above and not really use noun class derivationally.

Maybe this is a better way to ask:

To what extent do languages with noun class (especially Bantu languages) have root that ever use only 1 noun class affix?

[bradrn]

Let me shift the question a bit: are noun class affixes ALWAYS derivational? … My assumption at this point is that many to most words would use noun class affixes in a derivational manner. … To what extent do languages with noun class (especially Bantu languages) have root that ever use only 1 noun class affix?

I had a look at some grammars, and here’s what I could find:

• In Kikuyu (Bantu, here’s a grammar), it appears that most nouns belong to only one noun class. However, there do exist two noun classes which can be used derivationally: nouns can be put into Classes 12/13 to give the diminutive, and they can be put into Classes 7/8 to give the augmentative.
• In Hausa (Afro-Asiatic, Chadic), ‘out of a list of just over 5000 common nouns … approximately 75 are epicene (i.e., masculine or feminine depending on the sex of the referent) … in a small number of cases, the masculine and feminine variants of the same lexeme differ in meaning. Examples: maɗā̀cī m. mahogany tree vs. maɗā̀cīya f. gall bladder; kūrā m. hand cart vs. f. hyena’ (Newman 2000). I found nothing about Hausa noun classes being used in a productively derivational manner. EDIT: Reading a bit further, it does appear that there is one instance of derivational noun classes: as is usual with gender systems, human nouns can be placed in either the masculine or the feminine.
• Ngan’gityemerri (‘non–Pama-Nyungan’) has a set of 15 noun classes; some nouns can be used with two noun classes, though this seems fairly uncommon and does not appear to trigger any semantic change (Reid 1990). (Most commonly, nouns can be classified according to their ‘nature’ or their ‘function’; e.g. matches can be classified either under ‘tree’ or ‘fire’.)
• Some Western Nilotic languages have a set of classificatory suffixes used with nouns. (It is debatable whether such ‘noun classifiers’, which do not trigger agreement, are the same phenomenon as the ‘noun classes’ seen in IE and Bantu, which do trigger agreement.) The amount of productivity seems to differ between languages (Storch 2007), with the classifiers being highly productive in some languages and less productive in others.

So, from what I can see, there are almost always some words which can occur with two or more noun classes; on the other hand, many languages with noun classes do not use them derivationally, and even those with derivational noun classes may only allow one or two noun classes to be derivational.

[Kuchigakatai]

Variance in gender can also be related to pragmatics. In Polish, policemen can be insulted as "dogs" (singular pies), and the insult increases if you use the word in the animate/animal masculine gender as opposed to the personal/human masculine gender.



Spanish has inanimate nouns that change in meaning depending on gender, but these usually have some convoluted histories, and don't show much productivity or semantic predictability:
- primo 'male cousin; gullible guy; prime mark, prime number' vs. prima 'female cousin; insurance premium'
- suelo 'the ground, floor' vs. suela 'shoe sole'
- ramo 'bunch (of flowers)' vs. rama 'branch (of a tree, of a field of study)'

In some cases, though, the masculine expresses a thing of normal or slightly big size, while the feminine is a smaller variant of the object:
- cuchillo 'knife' vs. cuchilla 'dagger, shiv'
- cesto 'slightly big basket' vs. cesta 'small basket'
- barco 'ship, boat' vs. barca 'skiff, small roofless boat'
There's also the tree vs. fruit thing Richard mentioned of Latin, but in Spanish the endings match the gender fine (naranjo 'orange tree' vs. naranja 'orange').

Some pairs are furthermore entirely accidental:
- rato 'a short while' vs. rata 'rat' (the latter a Germanic borrowing)
- pato 'duck' vs. pata 'animal leg' (the former an Arabic borrowing)
- chino 'Chinese man; Chinese language' vs. china 'Chinese woman; maid (today an obsolescent meaning, previously common)' (the latter 'maid' meaning a Quechua borrowing)

[Richard W]

… in a small number of cases, the masculine and feminine variants of the same lexeme differ in meaning. Examples: maɗā̀cī m. mahogany tree vs. maɗā̀cīya f. gall bladder; kūrā m. hand cart vs. f. hyena’ (Newman 2000).

How are these words related? Or are they just examples of synonymous roots, like the four meanings of an Arabic root? (Main meaning, its opposite, something to do with camels (or horses), and something obscene.)

[bradrn]

… in a small number of cases, the masculine and feminine variants of the same lexeme differ in meaning. Examples: maɗā̀cī m. mahogany tree vs. maɗā̀cīya f. gall bladder; kūrā m. hand cart vs. f. hyena’ (Newman 2000).

How are these words related? Or are they just examples of synonymous roots, like the four meanings of an Arabic root? (Main meaning, its opposite, something to do with camels (or horses), and something obscene.)

Wouldn’t know, sorry; Newman doesn’t go into any details. (He does note that for many speakers, kūrā is always feminine regardless of its meaning, which suggests synonymy, but there are several other words showing similar alternations.)

[Vardelm]

It sounds like I have a lot of leeway. There will always be at least some that are derivational, but not all of them will. When there are derivational uses, it will tend to be the more person/intelligent/animate classes that have it.

I'll be continuing to do more searching, but this is very helpful!