Word-markers : Toward a morphosyntactic description of the Gorwaa noun

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Harvey, Andrew:
Word-markers : Toward a morphosyntactic description of the Gorwaa noun.
In: SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics. Bd. 19 (2018) . - S. 49-89.

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Abstract

Many languages are said to possess ‘gender’, that is, a morphosyntactic system in which nouns induce formal marking on other words beyond the noun itself (adjectives, verbs, etc.). Gorwaa (gow; South-Cushitic; Tanzania) possesses a gender system which is interrelated with number in a complex manner. Following the line of reasoning that biological (semantic) sex, grammatical (syntactic) gender, and (morphological) form-class are “interrelated but autonomous domains of linguistic generalization” set out in Harris’ (1991) examination of Spanish, and establishing that number and gender are interrelated in a complex manner, this paper considers the morphophonological word-markers of Gorwaa, a language whose nominal morphology is considerably different from that of Spanish. Following a discussion of gender and number in Gorwaa, all word-markers and their associated gender and number values are identified. In addition to being a useful exercise in arranging the empirical data, this paper sheds light on some surprising surface patterns of a little-studied language.