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Noun classes and grammatical gender in Wolof

Babou, Cheikh Anta ; Loporcaro, Michele

In: Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 2016, vol. 37, no. 1, p. 1-57

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    Titre
    • Noun classes and grammatical gender in Wolof
    Auteur
    • Babou, Cheikh Anta. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
    • Loporcaro, Michele. Department of Comparative Linguistics, University of Zürich, Plattenstrasse 54, CH-8032, Zürich, Switzerland
    Type de document
    • Postprint
    Langue
    • Anglais
    Publié dans
    • Journal of African Languages and Linguistics, 2016, vol. 37, no. 1, p. 1-57. De Gruyter
    Autre version électronique
    Identifiant OAI-PMH
    • oai:doc.rero.ch:326303
    Summary
    In this paper, we propose a reassessment of Wolof noun morphology and morphosyntax. Wolof is usually said to possess a total of 10 noun classes (8 for the singular, 2 for the plural), marked today exclusively on agreement targets. We provide evidence that two more plural noun classes must be recognized, which have so far been misinterpreted as "collective” rather than plural: the evidence we provide is morphosyntactic (from verb agreement) as well as morphological (from class-related asymmetries in the paradigm of the indefinite article). As for method, the main thrust of the paper consists in showing that an accurate analysis of the Wolof data must make use of the three distinct notions "noun class”, "inflectional class” and "agreement class” (or gender). Under the analysis defended here, Wolof turns out to have a fairly complex gender system, featuring 17 distinct gender values. Our analysis - and especially the discussion of Wolof so-called "collectives” - also bears on the general theoretical issue of how to establish the values of the number category.