A Guide to Gender and Classifiers

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Professor, Jawun Centre, Central Queensland University

Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald is Professor, Australian Laureate Fellow, and a Language and Culture Research Cluster Lead at the Jawun Research Centre at Central Queensland University in Cairns. She is a major authority on languages of the Arawak family, from northern Amazonia, and has written grammars of Bare (1995) and Warekena (1998), plus A Grammar of Tariana, from Northwest Amazonia (CUP, 2003) and The Manambu Language of East Sepik, Papua New Guinea (OUP, 2008; paperback 2010), in addition to essays on various typological and areal features of South American and Papuan languages and typological issues including evidentials, classifiers, and serial verbs. Her other recent publications with OUP include The Art of Grammar (2015), How Gender Shapes the World (2016; paperback 2019), and Serial Verbs (2018; paperback 2021), in addition to over a dozen edited volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Evidentiality (OUP 2017; paperback 2024).

1. Noun categorization devices: Setting the scenePart I. Gender2. Gender: Meanings and choices3. The expression of gender4. Gender in its further guisesPart II. Classifiers5. Numeral classifiers6. Noun classifiers7. Classifiers in possessive constructions8. Verbal classifiers9. Classifiers of further kinds10. Gender and classifiers in one language11. Multiple classifier languages: Contexts and propertiesPart III. Gender and classifiers: Meanings, function, evolution12. The meanings of gender and of classifiers13. What are gender and classifiers good for?14. The world through the prism of language: Social context and cognitive patterns in gender and classifiers15. Origins and histories of gender and classifiers16. Contact, obsolescence, and social change in gender and classifiers17. How gender and classifiers are acquired, and how they are lost18. Gender and classifiers: The heart of the matterAppendix. A fieldworker's guide: How to know more about genders and classifiers