Pronouns and Gender: Exploring Nominal Classification Systems in Northern New Guinea

Abstract

This article is intended not as an overview of the range of systems that can be found in the northern part of West Papua, but as a discussion of a typologically rare development of that is found in some languages of this quarter of New Guinea. This discursion is set in a brief discussion of some of the more typical systems that are found in geographically, and genetically, divergent languages of the region. The focus of the article is the presentation of data that shows the of the personal pronouns into different gender classes, and examines possible motivations for this unusual phenomenon. 1. NOMINAL CLASSIFICATION. The term nominal classification is used here to designate any grammatical system within a language that functions to divide the natural world into two or more parts. In New Guinea languages that employ overt classification, the most common division is a two-way distinction between masculine (male, animate, long, strong, warlike, hot, bright, mobile) and feminine (female, inanimate, short, squat, weak, cold, dark, static) categories (for a discussion of these systems in New Guinea, see Foley I986:8081). I shall present data from four languages of northern West Papua that employ this distinction, two with fairly typical (from a European perspective) consequences, and two that show a typologically unusual extension of the system from the third person into the first and second persons (henceforth referred to as local persons) as well and, crucially, employing this distinction to separate these persons into different gender classes.