Many languages have genders associated with all their nouns which affects syntax. English refers to gender only in third-person pronouns, and then gender is “natural” gender, with heand himreferring to people and ani- mals that are sexually male, sheand her referring to females and it for everything else (except for the outmoded practice of referring to ships and maybe automobiles as she). In a language like German every noun has a masculine, feminine, or neuter gender. Sometimes the genders are just the ones you would expect, so Frau‘woman’ is feminine and Mann‘man’ is mas- culine. Usually, though, the assignment of gender is quite arbitrary. For example, of the common eating utensils, Messer ‘knife’ is neuter, Gabel
‘fork’ is feminine, and Löffel ‘spoon’ is masculine. When these words are put into phrases, determiners and adjectives have to have endings that match the gender of the nouns, so that you get the distinctions in (20).
(20) a. [DPein [NPkleinesMesser]]
a small knife b. [DPeine[NPkleineGabel]]
a small fork b. [DPein [NPkleinerLöffel]]
a small spoon
These gender assignments have to be learned by anyone learning German.
Generally you can’t guess what gender a noun belongs to. There is noth- ing particularly feminine about a fork, for instance, or masculine about a spoon.
The task of learning genders in Swahili, a Bantu language widely spo- ken in East Africa, is much more daunting. Swahili has some ten genders, which are usually called noun classes. Bantu experts count the genders in different ways, so the number of genders is given as anywhere from seven to eighteen. Like the genders in German and other European languages, Swahili genders (noun classes) have meanings, but the assignment of nouns to genders is sometimes arbitrary, like the German words for knife, fork, and spoon. For example, the m/miclass (so called because of the pre- fixes on singular and plural nouns, respectively) is sometimes called the
“tree” class, because many of the nouns in it refer to trees and plants, but there are words for tools and other things that have this gender, as well.
Swahili genders have a pervasive effect in the syntax of sentences. Not only do adjectives have to have matching prefixes (not endings, as in German), but the nouns themselves and the verbs they agree with also have to have the right prefixes. Some of how this works is illustrated in (21) (examples adapted from Languages of the World 7: African Language Families).
(21) a. M-tu m-moja m-refu a-li-anguka M-person m-one m-tall m-PAST-fall
‘One tall person fell.’
b. Ki-kapu ki-moja ki-kubwa ki-li-anguka Ki-basket ki-one ki-large ki-PAST-fall
‘One large basket fell.’
In (21a), mtu is Swahili for ‘person’ and the root -tu belongs, naturally enough, to the “person” (m/wa) gender. The words for ‘one’ and ‘tall’ mod- ifying mtushare the “person” gender prefix. So does the verb root -anguka
‘fall,’ even though the prefix is pronounced a-. Kikapu ‘basket’ has the
“inanimate object” (ki/vi) gender. As (21b) shows, its modifiers and the verb in its clause all share the appropriate gender prefix. In the case of transi- tive verbs, the verb agrees with both its subject and its complement.
(22) [IP[NPWa-toto] [VPwa-na-ki-soma [NPki-tabu]]]
Wa-child wa-PRES-ki-read ki-book
‘The children are reading the book.’
In (22), the root -toto‘child,’ also in the m/wagender, has the plural prefix for its gender, as does the verb. But the verb also agrees with its object -tabu from the ki/vi gender. Similar agreement patterns exist for the remaining eight or so genders. In these examples, the meaning of the noun matches the meaning of the gender, but this is not always the case.
The ki/vi“inanimate object” gender also includes a few words for people and animals and some body parts.
In Thai, nouns are categorized in a gender-like way, but in Thai, there are literally scores of genders. Thai is not a language with prefixes or suf- fixes, so the genders show up in a very different way. Thai does not have endings for plural, so whether you are talking about one or many things is derived from the context. If you want to specify a specific number of things, it is necessary to use a classifieralong with the number. Consider the Thai examples in (23).
(23) a. phˇom rúucàg khruu I know teacher.
‘I know a teacher.’
‘I know teachers.’
b. phˇom rúucàg khruu khon sˇçɔN I know teacher Clf. two
‘I know two teachers.’
In (23a), only the context would determine whether I know a teacher or a number of teachers. In (23b), I specify that I know two teachers, and the classifier used for people has to be used. If I wanted to say that I see two clouds, I would use a different classifier, as in (24).
(24) phˇom hˇen mêeg kˆɔɔn sˇçɔN I see cloud Clf. two
‘I see two clouds.’
The classifier kˇɔɔnmeans things that are perceived as lumps, including stones and lumps of sugar, as well as clouds. Thai classifiers (genders) often refer to physical properties. For example, the classifier bajrepresents the gender for fruits and phˇyynis the gender including pieces of cloth in a form than can be used, like towels and curtains. But like all gender sys- tems, there is considerable unpredictability about what nouns are in what gender. The gender represented by bajincludes not only fruits, but also eggs and containers. Another gender, calling for the classifier khan, covers umbrellas, forks and spoons, streetcars and automobiles (Haas and Subhanka 1945).
Languages have a tendency to group nouns in categories that some- times have a relationship to the meanings of the nouns that are included, but are often entirely arbitrary. These categories are called genders in European languages, and we have used the term for the categories in Swahili and Thai to emphasize what they have in common. Gender has an effect on the syntax of the languages that have gender, but these effects are quite different from one type of language to another.
This chapter has concentrated on one aspect of syntax, an exploration of structure at an abstract level. This approach has contributed considerable insight into what grammar is like. On the other hand, it doesn’t tell the whole story about how language is organized. So far, we have taken what is generally known as a formalapproach to syntax. Other linguists are developing a variety of approaches that are sometimes referred to togeth- er as the functionalapproach. The term functionalin this context has an entirely different meaning from its use in our earlier discussion of func- tional categories. Advocates of functional syntax believe that the formal approach leaves out too much that is important. Specifically, it leaves out what the various structures are for, how they contribute to the usefulness of language for thought and communication. Functional syntacticians take the position that, if you focus on how syntactic structures are used, you will not need an abstract formal theory. Formal syntacticians, for their part, acknowledge that functional considerations play a role, but say that they are about language use, which is guided by a different set of prin- ciples from the ones that guide languageform. For functionalists, separat- ing form and use is artificial and misleading.
Although functional syntax takes this position at a philosophical level, in practice most work in functional syntax is about aspects of language that formal syntax never addresses. By the same token, formal syntax gen- erally takes no interest in the issues that fascinate the functionalists. The result is that there are very few studies of the two kinds that analyze exactly the same phenomenon. You might expect that each kind of study might reveal interesting insights about the structure of sentences that the other does not. This turns out to be true.