Noun classification systems in Africa between gender and declension (deriflection)

非洲的名词分类系统（性别和词形变化）

• 批准号: 338110259
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Tom Güldemann
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Seminar für Afrikawissenschaften
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/338110259?language=en
• 关键词: Noun; classification; systems; Africa; between

Understanding gender as noun classification combined with grammatical agreement, the project will investigate gender and its relation to declension in African languages. It starts out from the approach developed by Güldemann (2000 et al.), which uses four analytical core concepts: (i) Agreement class, (ii) Gender (class), (iii) Noun (form) class, and (iv) Declension class. All these concepts are interdependent but nevertheless must be separated strictly in description and analysis. The project combines two main objectives, one typological and one historical-comparative.The goal of the typological project component consists in the further development of a robust typological approach to gender systems on the basis of the above four analytical categories. The focus is on languages that have a complex and/or theoretically interesting number declension profile involving an intricate interplay with gender, notable Kxa, Tuu, Kadu, Cushitic, Niger-Kordofanian, which often leads to a complex interaction and competition between formal and semantic gender assignment. This will also be used to establish a continental typology of gender systems.The goal of the historical-comparative component is the reconstruction of gender systems in Niger-Kordofanian on different genealogical levels. The research in this group is traditionally biased towards a partly deficient approach, originating in Bantu studies, to conflate agreement and noun form classes under the philological concept of noun class. This has resulted in incomplete or even inappropriate reconstructions of gender systems in other families and their partly misleading evaluation in typological gender research. In order to improve the reconstruction of earlier language states, the above cross-linguistically uniform approach, which deals with gender and noun declension separately and ensures the comparability of systems, is applied. The first project phase deals with five geographical pools of Niger-Congo with functioning gender and associated declension systems and a wide geographical and genealogical spread. The historical-comparative analysis together with the consideration of areal distributions and language contact is hoped to also shed light on the still enigmatic history of the largest language family on an African and global level.

将性别理解为名词分类与语法一致性相结合，该项目将调查非洲语言中的性别及其与变格的关系。它从Güldemann（2000 et al.）开发的方法开始，它使用四个分析核心概念：（i）协议类，（ii）性别（类），（iii）名词（形式）类，和（iv）变格类。所有这些概念都是相互依存的，但在描述和分析中必须严格分开。该项目结合了两个主要目标，一个是类型学目标，一个是历史比较目标，类型学项目的目标是在上述四个分析类别的基础上，进一步发展对性别系统的强有力的类型学方法。重点是那些具有复杂和/或理论上有趣的数字变格特征的语言，涉及与性别的复杂相互作用，特别是Kxa，Tuu，Kadu，Cushitic，Kordofanian，这往往导致正式和语义性别分配之间的复杂互动和竞争。这也将被用来建立一个大陆性别系统类型学，历史比较部分的目标是在不同的谱系层次上重建科尔多凡语的性别系统。在这一组的研究传统上偏向于一个部分不足的方法，起源于班图研究，合并协议和名词形式类下的名词类的语言学概念。这导致了对其他家庭中性别系统的不完整甚至不适当的重建，以及对性别类型学研究的部分误导性评价。为了改善早期语言状态的重建，采用了上述跨语言统一的方法，该方法分别处理性别和名词变格，并确保系统的可比性。项目第一阶段涉及刚果民主共和国的五个地理群体，这些群体具有有效的性别和相关的变格系统，地理和谱系分布广泛。历史比较分析，再加上考虑地域分布和语言接触，希望也阐明了非洲和全球层面上最大的语言家族仍然神秘的历史。