Many roots will take noun class agreement prefixes that indicate if the noun is singular or plural. [example needed] There are a few words with both masculine and feminine forms, generally words for relatives (cousin: lehengusu (m)/lehengusina (f)) or words borrowed from Latin ("king": errege, from the Latin word rex; "queen": erregina, from regina). 2006) provides the following examples from Nyungwe. Bantu languages are characterised by a comprehensive noun class and con-cordial agreement system among terms. Some languages, such as Japanese, Chinese and the Tai languages, have elaborate systems of particles that go with nouns based on shape and function, but are free morphemes rather than affixes. Bantu languages are hypothesized to have descended from one mother language, Proto-Bantu. Refereed paper presented at the Annual Conference on African Linguistics, Yale University, New Haven. (a) a pair of prefixes attached to the nominal stem, one for singular, one for plural; Ohly, R., Kraska-Szlenk, i., Podobińska, Z. Bleek). The concept of noun classes is similar, except while Romance languages have 2-3 genders, Bantu languages can have up to 23 noun classes! Italian, for example, has a group of nouns deriving from Latin neuter nouns that acts as masculine in the singular but feminine in the plural: il braccio/le braccia; l'uovo/le uova. Classes 1 and 2 are used for human-denoting nouns (and pronouns), class 1 for singular and class 2 for plural. Noun classes. Iturrioz, J. L. (1986) "Structure, meaning and function: a functional analysis of gender and other classificatory techniques". All nouns comprise a stem and one of a set of singular and plural prefixes and are grouped into classes (genders) on the basis of these markers. The class of a noun is signalled by. There are two main theories regarding the development of noun class systems: one, proposed by Malcolm Guthrie in 1967, argues for semantically arbitrary noun classes determined only by grammatical and morphological criteria. Morphologically, however, the distinctions are not expressed on the nouns themselves, but on the verbs of which the nouns are the subject or direct object. A few nouns also exhibit vestigial noun classes, such as stewardess, where the suffix -ess added to steward denotes a female person. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its referent, such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. 20 gʊ and most don't have cl. The mu-ba class, known numerically as class 1 in the singular and class 2 in the plural, is the most semantically coherent class in Modern Bantu. Many of the exceptions have a round shape, and some can be explained by the role they play in Zande mythology. In Basque there are two classes, animate and inanimate; however, the only difference is in the declension of locative cases (inessive, locative genitive, allative, terminal allative, ablative and directional ablative). ), Greenberg, J. H. (1978) "How does a language acquire gender markers?". Each class is given a number corresponding to the same equivalent class in other Bantu languages. Noun classes. While no single language is known to express all of them, most of them have at least 10 noun classes. While the grammatical structure of the Proto-Bantu noun class … In Bantu languages Noun class systems are universal and almost always marked by prefixes, occasionally by suffixes. For RR and Luganda, classes 1 to 10 pair up as 1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8, and 9/10 to form singular and plural forms respectively. I … Jan. 1984: Zero-Derivation and Inflection. Noun class system. The Diyari language distinguishes only between female and other objects. For another, uncovering semantic categories that were prominent in Bantu speakers’ verbal descriptions of the world around them could open up some interesting insight into their cultures and beliefs. En J. H. Greenberg et al. 2006) provides the following examples from Nyungwe. It was first introduced (as Bâ-ntu) by Wilhelm Bleek in 1857 or 1858 and popularised in his Comparative Grammar of 1862. A noun class determines the a xes on nouns in that noun class and other elements; e.g. Classes 7-8 were heterogeneous. For instance, in Ring and It refers exclusively to people, though not all nouns that have human referents are placed in this class: Introduction Everyone who has ever worked with a Bantu language has faced the problem of deciding what kind of system is encoded with the gender class markers. Nouns are divided somewhat arbitrarily between these classes, although a few of them contain nouns which mostly fall into clear categories. Each noun class 3In the Bantuist tradition, a noun class numeral indicates both class (gender) and number: odd-numbered noun classes are for singular and even-numbered for plural. Author. Here is a complete list of nominal classes in Swahili: "Ø-" means no prefix. Jerro, Kyle Joseph. According to Steven Pinker, the Kivunjo language has 16 noun classes including classes for precise locations and for general locales, classes for clusters or pairs of objects and classes for the objects that come in pairs or clusters, and classes for abstract qualities.[3]. Bantu noun classes normally group into 10 or more singular/plural pairings. Class prefixes appear also on adjectives and verbs, e.g. Like Navajo, it has classificatory verb stems that classify nouns according to animacy, shape, and consistency. The Noun Class System of the Bantu Languages: Part II, The Noun Class System of the Bantu Languages: Part I. (eds.). The labels used in this chapter (mostly reproduced from Creissels & Pozdniakov The choice between the relative pronoun who (persons) and which (non-persons) may also be considered a form of agreement with a semantic noun class. Still, the assignment is somewhat arbitrary, as "raspberry" is animate, but "strawberry" is inanimate. Nouns are put into noun classes (categories) based on their prefixes. The Zande language distinguishes four noun classes:[5]. 9 and 10). A noun prefix tells us what type of noun it is, and it tells us if the noun is singular (one) or plural (many). Further, these noun classes are not only expressed on nouns and adjectives, but also on verbs, prepositions, and more. Atlantic–Congo languages can have ten or more noun classes, defined according to non-sexual criteria. The area in which Bantu languages are spoken is shown in beige on the map below. 1. SIL: Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is a noun class? In languages without inflectional noun classes, nouns may still be extensively categorized by independent particles called noun classifiers. As this was my final semester of my undergraduate studies, I completed the capstone for the Linguistics major. Bantu noun classes tend to come in pairs. For instance, in Swahili the word rafiki ‘friend’ belongs to the class 9 and its "plural form" is marafiki of the class 6, even if most nouns of the 9 class have the plural of the class 10. 1 1) Some classes are semantic and others are based on grammatical categories but almost all of them include many miscellaneous items. 20 gʊ and most don't have cl. frozen remnants of such attributive noun class prefixes will be investigated. Languages with nominal classes divide nouns formally on the base of hyperonymic meanings. Noun classes are said to have semantic content and be organized on a semantic basis. (These nouns are still placed in a neuter gender of their own by some grammarians.). The Anindilyakwa language has a noun class for things that reflect light. The table below shows the 16 noun classes and how they are paired in two commonly used systems. Classes 16-18 had no actual words. In this example, the verbal prefix a- and the pronominal prefix wa- are in concordance with the noun prefix m-: they all express class 1 despite of their different forms. (This inspired the title of the George Lakoff book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. While no single language is known to express all of them, most of them have at least 10 noun classes. Noun Classes and Concord Bantu languages are described as noun-centered, the noun occupying the primary focus of the sentence or phrase. The distinction between genders and nominal classes is blurred still further by Indo-European languages that have nouns that behave like Swahili's rafiki. particular classes of nouns, in linguistics, List of languages by type of noun classification, sfn error: no target: CITEREFCorbett1991 (, Learn how and when to remove this template message, List of languages by type of grammatical genders, "Remarks on a few "polyplural" classes in Bantu", Noun classes and categorization: Proceedings of a symposium on categorization and noun classification. It is unique in that its prefix does not change for singular and plural, though verbs and other parts of speech do inflect differently. Specialists in Bantu emphasize that there is a clear difference between genders (such as known from Afro-Asiatic and Indo-European) and nominal classes (such as known from Niger–Congo). According to Carl Meinhof, the Bantu languages have a total of 22 noun classes called nominal classes (this notion was introduced by W. H. J. Bleek). That is, Koyukon has two different systems that classify nouns: (a) a classificatory verb system and (b) a gender system. Critics of the Meinhof's approach notice that his numbering system of nominal classes counts singular and plural numbers of the same noun as belonging to separate classes. Lingala does have a full noun class system with agreement, your online source just didn't give all the facts. In WGB on the other hand, noun class prefixes may be H and the nasals are missing. Similar to all Bantu languages, Runyakitara has a noun class system. The N Class, known as classes 9 and 10, is the largest class in Modern Bantu. In particular the idea that noun classes, Why is this important? The word Bantu for the language families and its speakers is an artificial term based on the reconstructed Proto-Ntu term for “people” or “humans”. 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