Optimal Categorisation

Current Project

Optimal Categorisation: the origin and nature of gender from a psycholinguistic perspective.

Grammatical gender is perplexing concept that has raised an abundance of questions around its origin, impact and the classification of entities in various languages. With the primary question being: Why are there so many different categorisation systems?

People

Learn more about members of the project, including:

Researchers

Stakeholders

Consultants

Languages

With the objective to investigate the formation and development of gender in language and its interplay with cognition, six interconnected languages have been selected with distinctive possessive classifier systems. The sample of Oceanic languages encompass those spoken in Vanuatu and New Caledonia.

Experiments

To further comprehend the nature and origin of grammatical gender six psycholinguistic experiments have been developed. These experiments investigate classifier systems within the six oceanic languages, collecting data to investigate our hypotheses.

Outreach

Using our data, with the support of local stakeholders, we are creating vital vernacular literacy materials to help support these endangered languages. We are also interacting with the public to share, explain, and teach about these remarkable varieties of nominal categorisation.

Publications

Our team has published several papers as a result of our research, with other papers being written and reviewed.

Talks

Our researchers have given a number of talks as part of our outreach efforts to share the project findings.

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People

Researchers

Greville Corbett

Principal Investigator

Grev is an expert on nominal categorisation systems and his main role is to investigate how grammatical gender emerges from classifier systems. Grev is also furthering the typology of nominal classification systems by integrating together the disparate phenomena labelled ‘classifiers’ as well as the somewhat more homogeneous gender systems.

g.corbett@surrey.ac.uk

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Michael Franjieh

Post-doctoral Research Fellow

Mike is an expert in Oceanic languages with a special focus on the complex possessive constructions and nominal categorisation systems. Mike has over ten years of experience working with different language communities in the South Pacific. Mike’s main role is to conduct the fieldwork and experiments in Vanuatu and New Caledonia.

m.franjieh@surrey.ac.uk

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Alexandra Grandison

Co-Investigator

Ally is an expert on categorisation and cognition. Ally’s main role is to investigate the nature of the categorisation systems found in Vanuatu and how they impact general cognition. Ally is also preparing the psycholinguistic experiments and leading on quantitative analysis of the data.

a.grandison@surrey.ac.uk

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Stakeholders

Robert Early

University of the South Pacific, Vanuatu

Robert is an expert on the Lewo language (Vanuatu) and vernacular literacy development in Vanuatu and the South Pacific.

Albert Sio

Direction de la Culture et des Affaires Coutumières, Province des îles Loyauté, Nouvelle-Calédonie

Albert is an expert on the language and cultural policy in New Caledonia.

Helen Tamtam

Curriculum Development Unit, Ministry of Education and Training, Vanuatu

Helen is an expert in vernacular literacy development and language policy in Vanuatu.

Consultants

Isabelle Bril

Directrice d'études émérite, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris

Isabelle is a specialist in the Oceanic languages of New Caledonia and Taiwan.

Anne-Laure Dotte

University of the New Caledonia, Noumea

Anne-Laure is an expert in New Caledonian languages and possessive classifier systems.

Sonja Eisenbeiss

University of Düsseldorf, Germany

Sonja is a specialist in field-based psycholinguistic experiments.

Sebastian Fedden

Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3

Sebastian is an expert on Papuan languages of New Guinea and eastern Indonesia.

Eleanor Ridge

University of New Zealand, Massey University

Eleanor is a expert in languages of Vanuatu and the Pacific and language variation.