Volume 74, Issue 2 - Special Issue: More diversity enGENDERed by African languages; Issue Editors: Tom Güldemann and Ines Fiedler

We give an overview of current research questions pursued in connection with an ongoing project on nominal classification systems in Africa, with a particular focus on Niger-Congo. We first introduce our cross-linguistically applicable methodological approach which provides new insights into the design of a range of gender systems on the continent. We then apply these ideas to the “noun class” systems of Niger-Congo. We focus on non-canonical phenomena of poorly known languages, which attest to an unexpected systemic diversity beyond the well-known Bantu type and promise to change the synchronic and diachronic perspective on the gender systems of this family.

This paper describes the gender system of Laal, a language isolate of Chad. Laal has a strictly semantic, partly sex-based gender system making use of three semantic features: [±human], [masculine/feminine], and [±abstract], defining four genders: human masculine, human feminine, neuter, and abstract. Gender is covert on nouns; it is marked only on agreeing pronouns and functional words. The morphological marking and structure of the gender system is different in pronouns and functional words. Seven agreement classes are defined by various conflations of gender and number categories in both pronominal forms and functional words.

According to traditional analysis, Khoekhoe(gowab) makes a tripartite distinction between masculine, feminine, and common gender. Based on a statistical analysis of the comprehensive dictionary by Haacke and Eiseb and the first author’s status as a native speaker, the present paper offers new insights into the gender system of Khoekhoe. This concerns in particular the gender specification across the lexicon, including the status of transnumeral nouns, which leads to a partly revised analysis of the gender system.

This paper provides an exhaustive description of the gender system in the Tsumkwe Juǀ’hoan variety of Ju (Kx’a), a gender system that is largely insensitive to number and natural sex distinctions. The paper also highlights some important points of divergence in a closely related variety due to contact interference while nevertheless maintaining culturally salient aspects of the gender system.

This paper describes the gender system of the Ubangi language Mba, which can be characterized by the co-existence of two different classification systems. The ‘formal agreement’ system is tightly bound with the nominal deriflection system, while the ‘semantic agreement’ system, by contrast, emanates from a tripartite distinction in the language made between masculine humans, other animates, and inanimates. Whereas formal agreement is manifested on different elements that modify the head noun, the semantic agreement system operates in the pronominal domain, mostly outside the noun phrase.

This article describes the gender system of Longuda. Longuda class marking is alliterative and does not distinguish between nominal form and agreement marking. While it thus appears to be a prototypical example of a traditional Niger-Congo “noun-class” system, this identity of gender encoding makes it look morpho-syntactic rather than lexical. This points to a formerly independent status of the exponents of nominal classification, which is similar to a classifier system and thus less canonical. Both types of class marking hosts involve two formally and functionally differing allomorphs, which inform the historical reconstruction of Longuda noun classification in various ways.

This chapter examines the gender and deriflection systems of the Noon language of Senegal. The Noon deriflection system is notable for exhibiting a high number of unprefixed nouns, in contrast with the pervasive gender system characterized by prefixes on a variety of agreement targets. Two related but distinct gender systems can be identified. The first system is sensitive only to the lexical identity of the noun. The second system is influenced by the semantic factors of animacy and diminutiveness, as well as the phenomenon of reduction to a “default” gender, which can be seen as a reorganization of the first, more conservative agreement scheme.

The present paper describes the gender system of Anii, a Na-Togo language spoken in Benin and Togo. Anii has a full-fledged and productive gender system that consists of 10 agreement classes. It also provides 10 nominal form classes that are not fully identical with the agreement classes. The assignment of gender follows largely morphological criteria, but the prevalent principle for the current classification system is the division of nouns along the animacy hierarchy.

We re-assess the gender system of Ogbe-Oloma, an Edoid village variety of Nigeria. System exponents are prefixes that define form class and reflect grammatical number. We find that eight agreement classes undergird fourteen genders, while seventeen nominal form classes frame twenty-five number inflections. Prefix mapping from inflection to gender is non-isomorphic. Mapping is however constrained by syllable shape, CV- versus V-, and alliterative sound quality of prefix consonant, not vowel. In addition, several number inflections trigger agreement in multiple genders leading to one gender that exclusively refers to nouns with human reference.

This paper presents an analysis of grammatical gender and agreement in Durop, a language of the Upper Cross subgroup of Cross River. The data used are drawn from Kastelein (Kastelein, Bianca. 1994. A phonological and grammatical sketch of DuRop . Leiden: University of Leiden Scriptie), whose analysis treats gender as the singular – plural pairings of nouns different from the present approach. Kastelein identifies eight concord classes (agreement classes); these form the basis of gender in Durop in the present analysis; as many as 24 agreement classes are identified here. The various systems comprising nominal classification, agreement and gender in Durop are compared and discussed. The agreement system comprises three subsystems of differing numbers of agreement classes.