Where have all the noun classes gone? A case study of Jukun

Abstract

Jukun is commonly regarded as a language cluster which has lost its noun class prefixes almost completely, to the extent of building up new suffixes in some lects like Jukun of Takum (Welmers 1968). This paper aims at showing that there are some languages on the Northern periphery of the old Kororofa kingdom of the Jukun which have preserved various noun class prefixes and a more complex, more conservative morphology in general, so that the present make-up of the more central Jukun lects like Jukun of Wukari and Jukun of Takum can be understood as the result of a clear and straightforward tendency towards word stem apocope and morphological reduction