
In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. 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. Some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", but others consider these different concepts. Noun classes should not be confused with noun classifiers.
Notion
This section does not cite any sources.(October 2019) |
There are three main ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into noun classes:
- according to similarities in their meaning (semantic criterion);
- by grouping them with other nouns that have similar form (morphology);
- through an arbitrary convention.
Usually, a combination of the three types of criteria is used, though one is more prevalent.
Noun classes form a system of grammatical agreement. A noun in a given class may require:
- agreement affixes on adjectives, pronouns, numerals, etc. in the same noun phrase,
- agreement affixes on the verb,
- a special form of pronoun to replace the noun,
- an affix on the noun,
- a class-specific word in the noun phrase.
Modern English expresses noun classes through the third person singular personal pronouns he (male person), she (female person), and it (object, abstraction, or animal), and their other inflected forms. Countable and uncountable nouns are distinguished by the choice of many/much. 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. A few nouns also exhibit vestigial noun classes, such as stewardess, where the suffix -ess added to steward denotes a female person. This type of noun affixation is not very frequent in English, but quite common in languages which have the true grammatical gender, including most of the Indo-European family, to which English belongs.
In languages without inflectional noun classes, nouns may still be extensively categorized by independent particles called noun classifiers.
Common criteria for noun classes
Common criteria that define noun classes include:
- animate vs. inanimate (as in Ojibwe)
- rational vs. non-rational (as in Tamil)
- human vs. non-human
- human vs. animal (zoic) vs. inanimate
- male vs. other
- male human vs. other (as in Polish in masculine virile)
- masculine vs. feminine
- masculine vs. feminine vs. neuter
- common vs. neuter
- strong vs. weak
- augmentative vs. diminutive
- countable vs. uncountable
Language families
Algonquian languages
The Ojibwe language and other members of the Algonquian languages distinguish between animate and inanimate classes. Some sources argue that the distinction is between things which are powerful and things which are not. Living things, as well as sacred things and things connected to the Earth, are considered powerful and belong to the animate class. Still, the assignment is somewhat arbitrary, as "raspberry" is animate, but "strawberry" is inanimate.
Athabaskan languages
In Navajo (Southern Athabaskan) nouns are classified according to their animacy, shape, and consistency. 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. For example, in the sentence Shi’éé’ tsásk’eh bikáa’gi dah siłtsooz "My shirt is lying on the bed", the verb siłtsooz "lies" is used because the subject shi’éé’ "my shirt" is a flat, flexible object. In the sentence Siziiz tsásk’eh bikáa’gi dah silá "My belt is lying on the bed", the verb silá "lies" is used because the subject siziiz "my belt" is a slender, flexible object.
Koyukon (Northern Athabaskan) has a more intricate system of classification. Like Navajo, it has classificatory verb stems that classify nouns according to animacy, shape, and consistency. However, in addition to these verb stems, Koyukon verbs have what are called "gender prefixes" that further classify nouns. That is, Koyukon has two different systems that classify nouns: (a) a classificatory verb system and (b) a gender system. To illustrate, the verb stem -tonh is used for enclosed objects. When -tonh is combined with different gender prefixes, it can result in daaltonh which refers to objects enclosed in boxes or etltonh which refers to objects enclosed in bags.
Australian Aboriginal languages
The Dyirbal language is well known for its system of four noun classes, which tend to be divided along the following semantic lines:
The class usually labeled "feminine", for instance, includes the word for fire and nouns relating to fire, as well as all dangerous creatures and phenomena. (This inspired the title of the George Lakoff book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things.)
The Ngangikurrunggurr language has noun classes reserved for canines and hunting weapons. The Anindilyakwa language has a noun class for things that reflect light. The Diyari language distinguishes only between female and other objects. Perhaps the most noun classes in any Australian language are found in Yanyuwa, which has 16 noun classes, including nouns associated with food, trees and abstractions, in addition to separate classes for men and masculine things, women and feminine things. In the men's dialect, the classes for men and for masculine things have simplified to a single class, marked the same way as the women's dialect marker reserved exclusively for men.
Basque
Basque has two classes, animate and inanimate; however, the only difference is in the declension of locative cases (inessive, ablative, allative, terminal allative, and directional allative). For inanimate nouns, the locative case endings are attached directly if the noun is singular, and plural and indefinite number are marked by the suffixes -eta- and -(e)ta-, respectively, before the case ending (this is in contrast to the non-locative cases, which follow a different system of number marking where the indefinite form of the ending is the most basic). For example, the noun etxe "house" has the singular ablative form etxetik "from the house", the plural ablative form etxeetatik "from the houses", and the indefinite ablative form etxetatik (the indefinite form is mainly used with determiners that precede the noun: zenbat etxetatik "from how many houses"). For animate nouns, on the other hand, the locative case endings are attached (with some phonetic adjustments) to the suffix -gan-, which is itself attached to the singular, plural, or indefinite genitive case ending. Alternatively, -gan- may attach to the absolutive case form of the word if it ends in a vowel. For example, the noun ume "child" has the singular ablative form umearengandik or umeagandik "from the child", the plural ablative form umeengandik "from the children", and the indefinite ablative form umerengandik or umegandik (cf. the genitive forms umearen, umeen, and umeren and the absolutive forms umea, umeak, and ume). In the inessive case, the case suffix is replaced entirely by -gan for animate nouns (compare etxean "in/at the house" and umearengan/umeagan "in/at the child").
Caucasian languages
Some members of the Northwest Caucasian family, and almost all of the Northeast Caucasian languages, manifest noun class. In the Northeast Caucasian family, only Lezgian, Udi, and Aghul do not have noun classes. Some languages have only two classes, whereas Bats has eight. The most widespread system, however, has four classes: male, female, animate beings and certain objects, and finally a class for the remaining nouns. The Andi language has a noun class reserved for insects.
Among Northwest Caucasian languages, only Abkhaz and Abaza have noun class, making use of a human male/human female/non-human distinction.
In all Caucasian languages that manifest class, it is not marked on the noun itself but on the dependent verbs, adjectives, pronouns and postpositions or prepositions.
Atlantic–Congo languages
Atlantic–Congo languages can have ten or more noun classes, defined according to non-sexual criteria. Certain nominal classes are reserved for humans. The Fula language has about 26 noun classes (the exact number varies slightly by dialect).
Bantu languages
According to Carl Meinhof, the Bantu languages have a total of 22 noun classes called nominal classes (this notion was introduced by W. H. I. Bleek). While no single language is known to express all of them, most of them have at least 10 noun classes. For example, by Meinhof's numbering, Shona has 20 classes, Swahili has 15, Sotho has 18 and Ganda has 17.
Additionally, there are polyplural noun classes. A polyplural noun class is a plural class for more than one singular class. For example, Proto-Bantu class 10 contains plurals of class 9 nouns and class 11 nouns, while class 6 contains plurals of class 5 nouns and class 15 nouns. Classes 6 and 10 are inherited as polyplural classes by most surviving Bantu languages, but many languages have developed new polyplural classes that are not widely shared by other languages.
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). Languages with nominal classes divide nouns formally on the base of hyperonymic meanings. The category of nominal class replaces not only the category of gender, but also the categories of number and case.
Critics of 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. This seems to them to be inconsistent with the way other languages are traditionally considered, where number is orthogonal to gender (according to the critics, a Meinhof-style analysis would give Ancient Greek 9 genders). If one follows broader linguistic tradition and counts singular and plural as belonging to the same class, then Swahili has 8 or 9 noun classes, Sotho has 11 and Ganda has 10.
The Meinhof numbering tends to be used in scientific works dealing with comparisons of different Bantu languages. 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. For this reason, noun classes are often referred to by combining their singular and plural forms, e.g., rafiki would be classified as "9/6", indicating that it takes class 9 in the singular, and class 6 in the plural.
However not all Bantu languages have these exceptions. In Ganda each singular class has a corresponding plural class (apart from one class which has no singular–plural distinction; also some plural classes correspond to more than one singular class) and there are no exceptions as there are in Swahili. For this reason Ganda linguists use the orthogonal numbering system when discussing Ganda grammar (other than in the context of Bantu comparative linguistics), giving the 10 traditional noun classes of that language.
The distinction between genders and nominal classes is blurred still further by Indo-European languages that have nouns that behave like Swahili's rafiki. 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. (These nouns are still placed in a neuter gender of their own by some grammarians.)
Nominal classes in Swahili
Class number | Prefix | Typical meaning |
---|---|---|
1 | m-, mw-, mu- | singular: persons |
2 | wa-, w- | plural: persons (a plural counterpart of class 1) |
3 | m-, mw-, mu- | singular: plants |
4 | mi-, my- | plural: plants (a plural counterpart of class 3) |
5 | ji-, j-, Ø- | singular: fruits |
6 | ma-, m- | plural: fruits (a plural counterpart of class 5, 9, 11, seldom 1) |
7 | ki-, ch- | singular: things |
8 | vi-, vy- | plural: things (a plural counterpart of class 7) |
9 | n-, ny-, m-, Ø- | singular: animals, things |
10 | n-, ny-, m-, Ø- | plural: animals, things (a plural counterpart of class 9 and 11) |
11, 14 | u-, w-, uw- | singular: no clear semantics |
15 | ku-, kw- | verbal nouns |
16 | pa- | locative meanings: close to something |
17 | ku- | indefinite locative or directive meaning |
18 | mu-, m- | locative meanings: inside something |
"Ø-" means no prefix. Some classes are homonymous (esp. 9 and 10). The Proto-Bantu class 12 disappeared in Swahili, class 13 merged with 7, and 14 with 11.
Class prefixes appear also on adjectives and verbs, e.g.:
Kitabu
CL7-book
kikubwa
CL7-big
kinaanguka.
CL7-PRS-fall
'The big book falls.'
The class markers which appear on the adjectives and verbs may differ from the noun prefixes:
Mtoto
CL1-child
wangu
CL1-my
alinunua
CL1-PST-CL7-buy
kitabu.
CL7-book
'My child bought a book.'
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 their different forms.
Zande
The Zande language distinguishes four noun classes:
Criterion | Example | Translation |
---|---|---|
human (male) | kumba | man |
human (female) | dia | wife |
animate | nya | beast |
other | bambu | house |
There are about 80 inanimate nouns which are in the animate class, including nouns denoting heavenly objects (moon, rainbow), metal objects (hammer, ring), edible plants (sweet potato, pea), and non-metallic objects (whistle, ball). Many of the exceptions have a round shape, and some can be explained by the role they play in Zande mythology.
Noun classes versus grammatical gender
The term "gender", as used by some linguists, refers to a noun-class system composed with two, three, or four classes, particularly if the classification is semantically based on a distinction between masculine and feminine. Genders are then considered a sub-class of noun classes. Not all linguists recognize a distinction between noun-classes and genders, however, and instead use either the term "gender" or "noun class" for both.
Sometimes the distinction can drift over time. For instance, in Danish, the main dialects merged the three original genders down to a total of two genders. Some other dialects merged all three genders down to almost a one gender similar to English, but kept the neuter adjective form for uncountable nouns (which are all neuter in Danish). This effectively created a noun class system of countable and uncountable nouns reflected in adjectives.
Noun classes versus noun classifiers
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. Because the classes defined by these classifying words are not generally distinguished in other contexts, there are many linguists who take the view that they do not create noun classes.
List of languages by type of noun classification
Languages with noun classes
- Atlantic languages (Niger–Congo language family)
- Fula (Fulfulde, Pulaar, Pular)
- Wolof
- all Bantu languages (Niger–Congo language family) such as
- Ganda: ten classes called simply Class I to Class X and containing all sorts of arbitrary groupings but often characterised as people, long objects, animals, miscellaneous objects, large objects and liquids, small objects, languages, pejoratives, infinitives, mass nouns, plus four 'locative' classes. Alternatively, the Meinhof system of counting singular and plural as separate classes gives a total of 21 classes including the four locatives.
- Swahili
- Zulu
- Northeast Caucasian languages such as Bats
- Dyirbal: Masculine, feminine, vegetable and other. (Some linguists do not regard the noun-class system of this language as grammatical gender.)
- Arapesh languages such as Mufian
Languages with grammatical genders
See also
- Animacy
- Classifier (linguistics)
- Declension
- Grammatical agreement
- Grammatical category
- Grammatical conjugation
- Grammatical gender
- Grammatical number
- Inflection
- Redundancy (linguistics)
- Synthetic language
References
Inline
- "Slavic Languages". Archived from the original on 2016-10-09. Retrieved 2022-06-22.
- Corbett 1991, p. 15.
- Jean F Kirton. 'Yanyuwa, a dying language'. In Michael J Ray (ed.), Aboriginal language use in the Northern Territory: 5 reports. Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Darwin: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1988, p. 1–18.
- "Remarks on a few "polyplural" classes in Bantu" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-12-11. Retrieved 2014-03-06.
- Corbett 1991, p. 14.
- "Naveneordernes køn" [The genders of the nouns] (in Danish). Copenhagen University, Centre for Dialect Research. 22 April 2015.
General
- Craig, Colette G. (1986). Noun classes and categorization: Proceedings of a symposium on categorization and noun classification, Eugene, Oregon, October 1983. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.
- Corbett, Greville G. (1991). Gender. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781139166119. ISBN 9780521329392. – A comprehensive study; looks at 200 languages.
- Corbett, Geville (1994) "Gender and gender systems". En R. Asher (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Oxford: Pergamon Press, pp. 1347–1353.
- Greenberg, J. H. (1978) "How does a language acquire gender markers?". En J. H. Greenberg et al. (eds.) Universals of Human Language, Vol. 4, pp. 47–82.
- Hockett, Charles F. (1958) A Course in Modern Linguistics, Macmillan.
- Ibrahim, M. (1973) Grammatical gender. Its origin and development. La Haya: Mouton.
- Iturrioz, J. L. (1986) "Structure, meaning and function: a functional analysis of gender and other classificatory techniques". Función 1. 1-3.
- Meissner, Antje & Anne Storch (eds.) (2000) Nominal classification in African languages, Institut für Afrikanische Sprachwissenschaften, Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main. Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag. ISBN 3-89645-014-X.
- Ohly, R., Kraska-Szlenk, i., Podobińska, Z. (1998) Język suahili. Wydawnictwo Akademickie "Dialog". Warszawa. ISBN 83-86483-87-3
- Pinker, Steven (1994) The Language Instinct, William Morrow and Company.
- Мячина, Е.Н. (1987) Краткий грамматический очерк языка суахили. In: Суахили-русский словарь. Kamusi ya Kiswahili-Kirusi. Москва. "Русский Язык".
- SIL: Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is a noun class?
External links
- World Atlas of Language Structures
- Global map and discussion of languages by type of noun class at WALS: Number of Genders
- Swahili
- Contini-Morava, Ellen. Noun Classification in Swahili Archived 2020-10-26 at the Wayback Machine. 1994.
- On nominal classes in Swahili
In linguistics a noun class is a particular category of nouns 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 Some authors use the term grammatical gender as a synonym of noun class but others consider these different concepts Noun classes should not be confused with noun classifiers NotionThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed October 2019 Learn how and when to remove this message There are three main ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into noun classes according to similarities in their meaning semantic criterion by grouping them with other nouns that have similar form morphology through an arbitrary convention Usually a combination of the three types of criteria is used though one is more prevalent Noun classes form a system of grammatical agreement A noun in a given class may require agreement affixes on adjectives pronouns numerals etc in the same noun phrase agreement affixes on the verb a special form of pronoun to replace the noun an affix on the noun a class specific word in the noun phrase Modern English expresses noun classes through the third person singular personal pronouns he male person she female person and it object abstraction or animal and their other inflected forms Countable and uncountable nouns are distinguished by the choice of many much 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 A few nouns also exhibit vestigial noun classes such as stewardess where the suffix ess added to steward denotes a female person This type of noun affixation is not very frequent in English but quite common in languages which have the true grammatical gender including most of the Indo European family to which English belongs In languages without inflectional noun classes nouns may still be extensively categorized by independent particles called noun classifiers Common criteria for noun classes Common criteria that define noun classes include animate vs inanimate as in Ojibwe rational vs non rational as in Tamil human vs non human human vs animal zoic vs inanimate male vs other male human vs other as in Polish in masculine virile masculine vs feminine masculine vs feminine vs neuter common vs neuter strong vs weak augmentative vs diminutive countable vs uncountableLanguage familiesAlgonquian languages The Ojibwe language and other members of the Algonquian languages distinguish between animate and inanimate classes Some sources argue that the distinction is between things which are powerful and things which are not Living things as well as sacred things and things connected to the Earth are considered powerful and belong to the animate class Still the assignment is somewhat arbitrary as raspberry is animate but strawberry is inanimate Athabaskan languages In Navajo Southern Athabaskan nouns are classified according to their animacy shape and consistency 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 For example in the sentence Shi ee tsask eh bikaa gi dah siltsooz My shirt is lying on the bed the verb siltsooz lies is used because the subject shi ee my shirt is a flat flexible object In the sentence Siziiz tsask eh bikaa gi dah sila My belt is lying on the bed the verb sila lies is used because the subject siziiz my belt is a slender flexible object Koyukon Northern Athabaskan has a more intricate system of classification Like Navajo it has classificatory verb stems that classify nouns according to animacy shape and consistency However in addition to these verb stems Koyukon verbs have what are called gender prefixes that further classify nouns That is Koyukon has two different systems that classify nouns a a classificatory verb system and b a gender system To illustrate the verb stem tonh is used for enclosed objects When tonh is combined with different gender prefixes it can result in daaltonh which refers to objects enclosed in boxes or etltonh which refers to objects enclosed in bags Australian Aboriginal languages The Dyirbal language is well known for its system of four noun classes which tend to be divided along the following semantic lines animate objects menwomen water fire violenceedible fruit and vegetablesmiscellaneous includes things not classifiable in the first three The class usually labeled feminine for instance includes the word for fire and nouns relating to fire as well as all dangerous creatures and phenomena This inspired the title of the George Lakoff book Women Fire and Dangerous Things The Ngangikurrunggurr language has noun classes reserved for canines and hunting weapons The Anindilyakwa language has a noun class for things that reflect light The Diyari language distinguishes only between female and other objects Perhaps the most noun classes in any Australian language are found in Yanyuwa which has 16 noun classes including nouns associated with food trees and abstractions in addition to separate classes for men and masculine things women and feminine things In the men s dialect the classes for men and for masculine things have simplified to a single class marked the same way as the women s dialect marker reserved exclusively for men Basque Basque has two classes animate and inanimate however the only difference is in the declension of locative cases inessive ablative allative terminal allative and directional allative For inanimate nouns the locative case endings are attached directly if the noun is singular and plural and indefinite number are marked by the suffixes eta and e ta respectively before the case ending this is in contrast to the non locative cases which follow a different system of number marking where the indefinite form of the ending is the most basic For example the noun etxe house has the singular ablative form etxetik from the house the plural ablative form etxeetatik from the houses and the indefinite ablative form etxetatik the indefinite form is mainly used with determiners that precede the noun zenbat etxetatik from how many houses For animate nouns on the other hand the locative case endings are attached with some phonetic adjustments to the suffix gan which is itself attached to the singular plural or indefinite genitive case ending Alternatively gan may attach to the absolutive case form of the word if it ends in a vowel For example the noun ume child has the singular ablative form umearengandik or umeagandik from the child the plural ablative form umeengandik from the children and the indefinite ablative form umerengandik or umegandik cf the genitive forms umearen umeen and umeren and the absolutive forms umea umeak and ume In the inessive case the case suffix is replaced entirely by gan for animate nouns compare etxean in at the house and umearengan umeagan in at the child Caucasian languages Some members of the Northwest Caucasian family and almost all of the Northeast Caucasian languages manifest noun class In the Northeast Caucasian family only Lezgian Udi and Aghul do not have noun classes Some languages have only two classes whereas Bats has eight The most widespread system however has four classes male female animate beings and certain objects and finally a class for the remaining nouns The Andi language has a noun class reserved for insects Among Northwest Caucasian languages only Abkhaz and Abaza have noun class making use of a human male human female non human distinction In all Caucasian languages that manifest class it is not marked on the noun itself but on the dependent verbs adjectives pronouns and postpositions or prepositions Atlantic Congo languages Atlantic Congo languages can have ten or more noun classes defined according to non sexual criteria Certain nominal classes are reserved for humans The Fula language has about 26 noun classes the exact number varies slightly by dialect Bantu languages According to Carl Meinhof the Bantu languages have a total of 22 noun classes called nominal classes this notion was introduced by W H I Bleek While no single language is known to express all of them most of them have at least 10 noun classes For example by Meinhof s numbering Shona has 20 classes Swahili has 15 Sotho has 18 and Ganda has 17 Additionally there are polyplural noun classes A polyplural noun class is a plural class for more than one singular class For example Proto Bantu class 10 contains plurals of class 9 nouns and class 11 nouns while class 6 contains plurals of class 5 nouns and class 15 nouns Classes 6 and 10 are inherited as polyplural classes by most surviving Bantu languages but many languages have developed new polyplural classes that are not widely shared by other languages 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 Languages with nominal classes divide nouns formally on the base of hyperonymic meanings The category of nominal class replaces not only the category of gender but also the categories of number and case Critics of 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 This seems to them to be inconsistent with the way other languages are traditionally considered where number is orthogonal to gender according to the critics a Meinhof style analysis would give Ancient Greek 9 genders If one follows broader linguistic tradition and counts singular and plural as belonging to the same class then Swahili has 8 or 9 noun classes Sotho has 11 and Ganda has 10 The Meinhof numbering tends to be used in scientific works dealing with comparisons of different Bantu languages 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 For this reason noun classes are often referred to by combining their singular and plural forms e g rafiki would be classified as 9 6 indicating that it takes class 9 in the singular and class 6 in the plural However not all Bantu languages have these exceptions In Ganda each singular class has a corresponding plural class apart from one class which has no singular plural distinction also some plural classes correspond to more than one singular class and there are no exceptions as there are in Swahili For this reason Ganda linguists use the orthogonal numbering system when discussing Ganda grammar other than in the context of Bantu comparative linguistics giving the 10 traditional noun classes of that language The distinction between genders and nominal classes is blurred still further by Indo European languages that have nouns that behave like Swahili s rafiki 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 These nouns are still placed in a neuter gender of their own by some grammarians Nominal classes in Swahili Class number Prefix Typical meaning1 m mw mu singular persons2 wa w plural persons a plural counterpart of class 1 3 m mw mu singular plants4 mi my plural plants a plural counterpart of class 3 5 ji j O singular fruits6 ma m plural fruits a plural counterpart of class 5 9 11 seldom 1 7 ki ch singular things8 vi vy plural things a plural counterpart of class 7 9 n ny m O singular animals things10 n ny m O plural animals things a plural counterpart of class 9 and 11 11 14 u w uw singular no clear semantics15 ku kw verbal nouns16 pa locative meanings close to something17 ku indefinite locative or directive meaning18 mu m locative meanings inside something O means no prefix Some classes are homonymous esp 9 and 10 The Proto Bantu class 12 disappeared in Swahili class 13 merged with 7 and 14 with 11 Class prefixes appear also on adjectives and verbs e g Kitabu CL7 bookkikubwa CL7 bigkinaanguka CL7 PRS fall Kitabu kikubwa kinaanguka CL7 book CL7 big CL7 PRS fall The big book falls The class markers which appear on the adjectives and verbs may differ from the noun prefixes Mtoto CL1 childwangu CL1 myalinunua CL1 PST CL7 buykitabu CL7 book Mtoto wangu alinunua kitabu CL1 child CL1 my CL1 PST CL7 buy CL7 book My child bought a book 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 their different forms Zande The Zande language distinguishes four noun classes Criterion Example Translationhuman male kumba manhuman female dia wifeanimate nya beastother bambu house There are about 80 inanimate nouns which are in the animate class including nouns denoting heavenly objects moon rainbow metal objects hammer ring edible plants sweet potato pea and non metallic objects whistle ball Many of the exceptions have a round shape and some can be explained by the role they play in Zande mythology Noun classes versus grammatical genderThe term gender as used by some linguists refers to a noun class system composed with two three or four classes particularly if the classification is semantically based on a distinction between masculine and feminine Genders are then considered a sub class of noun classes Not all linguists recognize a distinction between noun classes and genders however and instead use either the term gender or noun class for both Sometimes the distinction can drift over time For instance in Danish the main dialects merged the three original genders down to a total of two genders Some other dialects merged all three genders down to almost a one gender similar to English but kept the neuter adjective form for uncountable nouns which are all neuter in Danish This effectively created a noun class system of countable and uncountable nouns reflected in adjectives Noun classes versus noun classifiersSome 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 Because the classes defined by these classifying words are not generally distinguished in other contexts there are many linguists who take the view that they do not create noun classes List of languages by type of noun classificationLanguages with noun classes Atlantic languages Niger Congo language family Fula Fulfulde Pulaar Pular Wolof all Bantu languages Niger Congo language family such as Ganda ten classes called simply Class I to Class X and containing all sorts of arbitrary groupings but often characterised as people long objects animals miscellaneous objects large objects and liquids small objects languages pejoratives infinitives mass nouns plus four locative classes Alternatively the Meinhof system of counting singular and plural as separate classes gives a total of 21 classes including the four locatives Swahili Zulu Northeast Caucasian languages such as Bats Dyirbal Masculine feminine vegetable and other Some linguists do not regard the noun class system of this language as grammatical gender Arapesh languages such as MufianLanguages with grammatical gendersSee alsoAnimacy Classifier linguistics Declension Grammatical agreement Grammatical category Grammatical conjugation Grammatical gender Grammatical number Inflection Redundancy linguistics Synthetic languageReferencesInline Slavic Languages Archived from the original on 2016 10 09 Retrieved 2022 06 22 Corbett 1991 p 15 Jean F Kirton Yanyuwa a dying language In Michael J Ray ed Aboriginal language use in the Northern Territory 5 reports Work Papers of the Summer Institute of Linguistics Darwin Summer Institute of Linguistics 1988 p 1 18 Remarks on a few polyplural classes in Bantu PDF Archived from the original PDF on 2009 12 11 Retrieved 2014 03 06 Corbett 1991 p 14 Naveneordernes kon The genders of the nouns in Danish Copenhagen University Centre for Dialect Research 22 April 2015 General Craig Colette G 1986 Noun classes and categorization Proceedings of a symposium on categorization and noun classification Eugene Oregon October 1983 Amsterdam J Benjamins Corbett Greville G 1991 Gender Cambridge University Press doi 10 1017 CBO9781139166119 ISBN 9780521329392 A comprehensive study looks at 200 languages Corbett Geville 1994 Gender and gender systems En R Asher ed The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics Oxford Pergamon Press pp 1347 1353 Greenberg J H 1978 How does a language acquire gender markers En J H Greenberg et al eds Universals of Human Language Vol 4 pp 47 82 Hockett Charles F 1958 A Course in Modern Linguistics Macmillan Ibrahim M 1973 Grammatical gender Its origin and development La Haya Mouton Iturrioz J L 1986 Structure meaning and function a functional analysis of gender and other classificatory techniques Funcion 1 1 3 Meissner Antje amp Anne Storch eds 2000 Nominal classification in African languages Institut fur Afrikanische Sprachwissenschaften Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat Frankfurt am Main Koln Rudiger Koppe Verlag ISBN 3 89645 014 X Ohly R Kraska Szlenk i Podobinska Z 1998 Jezyk suahili Wydawnictwo Akademickie Dialog Warszawa ISBN 83 86483 87 3 Pinker Steven 1994 The Language Instinct William Morrow and Company Myachina E N 1987 Kratkij grammaticheskij ocherk yazyka suahili In Suahili russkij slovar Kamusi ya Kiswahili Kirusi Moskva Russkij Yazyk SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms What is a noun class External linksWorld Atlas of Language StructuresGlobal map and discussion of languages by type of noun class at WALS Number of GendersSwahiliContini Morava Ellen Noun Classification in Swahili Archived 2020 10 26 at the Wayback Machine 1994 On nominal classes in Swahili