Universal #803

Legacy number: 803

 Number  800
 Original  Languages that tend towards isolating (such as most of those in east and south-east Asia) most typically employ noun classifiers, whereas languages that are strongly agglutinative (as in Africa) or inflectional (most Indo-European tongues) prefer systems of noun classes.
 Standardized  IF a language is isolating (with bound morphology lacking), THEN there tend to be noun classifiers rather than noun classes.
IF there is agglutination or flexion (in languages with rich inflectional systems), THEN there tend to be noun classes rather than noun classifiers
 Formula  isolating ⇒ classifiers
agglutinative v flexive ⇒ classes
 Keywords  agglutination, flexion, isolation, classifier, noun class
 Domain  inflection, syntax
 Type  implication
 Status  achronic
 Quality  statistical
 Basis  languages in Dixon 1986
 Source  Dixon 1986: 109 (see also Dixon 1982: 218, <a class="innerLink" href="browse.php?entry_id=804"><img src="../img/entry.gif" border="0">)

← Back to Universals Archive

Discussion
Counterexamples
Marrithiyel (Daly, Australian) is a classifying language (see criteria in Dixon 1982: 217ff). Since Dixon treats category marker concord as a diagnostic of classing rather than of classifying status, there is a potential problem. Perhaps the correlation might be “restated as being between complex morphology and concordial patterning, rather that the whole array of functional-semantic class features.” (Green 1997: 248-251)
Notes
Dixon 1982: 219 notes: “The correlation between noun classes/classifiers and morphological type is only a statistical one”.See also #1958.
Comment
Frans Plank · 3 Aug 2006
Dixon 1982: 219 notes: "The correlation between noun classes/classifiers and morphological type is only a statistical one".
See also <a class="innerLink" href="browse.php?entry_id=1958"><img src="../img/entry.gif" border="0">.