Non-Canonical Gender Systems | Nominal Categorisation

Linguists’ typologies serve as roadmaps for language variation, with Canonical Typology being a recent framework. This approach focuses on linguistic properties, allowing for a clearer understanding of data and analysis. Exploring grammatical gender from a canonical perspective, the book aims to provide a better understanding of the most puzzling grammatical categories and their theoretical significance.

Introduction

Linguists’ typologies are roadmaps for the landscape of language variation. Such roadmaps have been drawn for many linguistic phenomena, on a wide array of natural languages, and according to a variety of theoretical principles. Among the recent advances in ‘map-making’ we find the framework that underpins the present volume, Canonical Typology. Developed initially for agreement (Corbett 2003, 2006a) and morphosyntactic features (Corbett 2012), Canonical Typology approaches linguistic properties in a principled, fine-grained, and terminologically responsible way that allows us a clearer view on our data and a better grounding for our analysis.

The primary roadmap for grammatical gender is a textbook (Corbett 1991). Predating the inception of Canonical Typology by a decade, the book lays out the variation in the gender systems of the world, their rise, development, and decline, the principles of their organization, and the theoretical challenges they pose. Armed with the data collected for this book and the many new descriptive sources uncovered since, we can now set out to explore the landscape of grammatical gender from a canonical perspective. The primary interest of the present volume lies in the outer borders of the realm, where principled decisions are needed to motivate the analysis of the often quirky systems we find there. By exploring its boundaries, we hope to arrive at a better understanding of the ‘most puzzling of grammatical categories’ (Corbett 1991: 1) and a greater appreciation of its theoretical significance.

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