Nominal Classification in Asia and Oceania

Book excerpt: Linguists have long been interested in systems of nominal classification due to their diverse functions as well as cognitive and cultural correlates. Among others, ongoing research has focused on semantic, functional and morphosyntactic properties of complex systems such as co-occurring gender and numeral classifiers. Such approaches have typically focused on the languages of north-western South America and Papua New Guinea. This volume proposes to fill in a gap in existing research by focusing on Asia, based on case studies from languages belonging to a wide range of families, i.e., Austroasiatic, Austronesian, Dravidian, Hmong-Mien, Indo-European, Mongolic, Sino-Tibetan and Tai-Kadai as well as the language isolate Nivkh. Gender and classifiers in these languages are approached within several different perspectives, i.e., functional, typological and diachronic, thus revealing complex patterns in their lexical and pragmatic functions as well as origin, development and loss. Describing and analysing such properties is a unique and innovative contribution of the volume.