The Tukanoan languages of the Amazon Basin offer compelling evidence for the ongoing debate on gender and classifiers, now reanalyzed as classifying nominalizations—structures that simultaneously nominalize (numerals, demonstratives, etc.) and categorize their referents (e.g., “two feminine-class entities”, “this round-shaped entity”). This presentation highlights the usefulness of the hierarchies proposed in Shibatani (2023) in constraining both the diachronic development and synchronic distribution of gender and classifier marking.
We examine patterns of convergence and divergence in gender features (e.g., animacy, masculine/feminine) and classifiers (e.g., shape, consistency, function) across several Tukanoan languages. Our findings challenge the traditional view of gender and classifiers as distinct systems, instead revealing a more integrated relationship characterized by the degree of grammaticalization.
(Masayoshi Shibatani. 2023. Towards dynamic functional typology—Classifiers, genders, and nominalization—Historical Linguistics in Japan No.12: 1-52. (Japan Society for Historical Linguistics; Available via Academia.edu.)