A noun class/gender system categorizes nouns for the purposes of grammatical agreement with other constituents in the noun phrase or other inflectional morphology. See the classification wiki page for more information on our definition of noun class/gender. Noun class/gender assignment may be based on one or several factors. This feature focuses on whether one of these factors distinguishes plants from other concepts. For this feature to be coded 1, there must be a clear pattern in which nouns that refer to plants or some subset of plant referents are assigned to one or more specific noun classes.
Although the semantic factors in noun class/gender assignment are not always perfectly clear-cut, this feature targets those systems in which certain nouns are assigned to a particular class because their referents are plants. Systems in which several nominals with plant referents are assigned to a particular class because of their phonology or due to some more or less arbitrary assignment are not the target of this feature. That is, plant status must be a relevant factor in the assignment of gender. However, it does not need to be an absolute deciding factor or the only relevant factor in gender/class assignment for a particular category.
Chuwabu (ISO 639-3: chw, Glottolog: chuw1238)
Noun classes 3 and 4 in Chuwabu contain most nouns with tree, plant, or plant part meanings (Guérois 2015: 150). Nouns with long, thin, or extended shapes also fall into these classes, potentially because of the association between these shapes and the shape properties of canonical plant structures like stems (Guérois 2015: 152). There are some other nouns that fall into classes 3 and 4 without any obvious semantic reasoning for their inclusion in these classes (Guérois 2015: 153). The organization of these classes around plant semantics is clear, regardless of the shape-based semantic extension and inclusion of semantically unrelated nouns, so Chuwabu is coded 1.
Bininj Kun-Wok (ISO 639-3: gup, Glottolog: gunw1252)
The four semantic categories of gender assignment in this language are described as Masculine, Feminine, Vegetable, and Neuter. The vegetable class includes plants and their products, fire, food, some types of honey, as well as several categories like sexual and excretory body parts, song/ceremony/custom, and boats/planes/cars that are less obviously linked to plant status (Evans 2003: 200–207). Bininj Kun-Wok is coded 1.
Situ (ISO 639-3: N/A, Glottolog: situ1238)
Nouns referring to plants in Situ are part of the larger inanimate noun class (Prins 2011: 148). While there is indeed a pattern with regard to which noun class plants are assigned to, botanical meaning is not a semantic property around which this noun class is organized. Situ is coded 0.
Corbett, Greville G. 1991. Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Senft, Gunter. 2000. Systems of nominal classification. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Evans, Nicholas. 2003. Bininj Gun-Wok: A pan-dialectal grammar of Mayali, Kunwinjku and Kune. (Pacific Linguistics, 541.) Canberra: Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University.
Guérois, Rozenn. 2015. A grammar of Cuwabo (Mozambique, Bantu P34). Lyon: Université Lumière Lyon 2. (Doctoral dissertation.)
Prins, Maria Clazina. 2011. A web of relations: a grammar of rGyalrong Jiăomùzú (Kyom-kyo) dialects. Leiden: Leiden University. (Doctoral dissertation.)
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| 0 | absent | 2036 | |
| 1 | present | 153 | |
| ? | Not known | 219 |
| Name | Glottocode | Family | Macroarea | Contributor | Value | Source | Comment |
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