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This page pertains to UD version 2.

NounClass: noun class

Values: Bantu1 Bantu2 Bantu3 Bantu4 Bantu5 Bantu6 Bantu7 Bantu8 Bantu9 Bantu10
Bantu11 Bantu12 Bantu13 Bantu14 Bantu15 Bantu16 Bantu17 Bantu18 Bantu19 Bantu20
Bantu21 Bantu22 Bantu23
Wol1 Wol2 Wol3 Wol4 Wol5 Wol6 Wol7 Wol8 Wol9 Wol10
Wol11 Wol12

NounClass is similar to Gender and Animacy because it is to a large part a lexical category of nouns and other parts of speech inflect for it to show agreement (pronouns, adjectives, determiners, numerals, verbs).

The distinction between gender and noun class is not sharp and is partially conditioned by the traditional terminology of a given language family. In general, the feature is called gender if the number of possible values is relatively low (typically 2-4) and the partition correlates with sex of people and animals. In language families where the number of categories is high (10-20), the feature is usually called noun class. No language family uses both the features.

In Bantu languages, the noun class also encodes Number; therefore it is a lexical-inflectional feature of nouns. The words should be annotated with the Number feature in addition to NounClass, despite the fact that people who know Bantu could infer the number from the noun class. The lemma of the noun should be its singular form.

The set of values of this feature is specific for a language family or group. Within the group, it is possible to identify classes that have similar meaning across languages (although some classes may have merged or disappeared in some languages in the group). The value of the NounClass feature consists of a short identifier of the language group (e.g., Bantu), and the number of the class (there is a standardized class numbering system accepted by scholars of the various Bantu languages; similar numbering systems should be created for the other families that have noun classes).

List of noun classes in Swahili

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_class)

Class number Prefix Typical meaning
1 m-, mw-, mu- singular: persons
2 wa-, w- plural: persons (a plural counterpart of class 1)
3 m-, mw-, mu- singular: plants
4 mi-, my- plural: plants (a plural counterpart of class 3)
5 ji-, j-, Ø- singular: fruits
6 ma-, m- plural: fruits (a plural counterpart of class 5, 9, 11, seldom 1)
7 ki-, ch- singular: things
8 vi-, vy- plural: things (a plural counterpart of class 7)
9 n-, ny-, m-, Ø- singular: animals, things
10 n-, ny-, m-, Ø- plural: animals, things (a plural counterpart of class 9 and 11)
11 u-, w-, uw- singular: no clear semantics
15 ku-, kw- verbal nouns
16 pa- locative meanings: close to something
17 ku- indefinite locative or directive meaning
18 mu-, m- locative meanings: inside something

Bantu1: singular, persons

The corresponding plural class is Bantu2.

Examples

Bantu2: plural, persons

The corresponding singular class is Bantu1.

Examples

Bantu3: singular, plants, thin objects

The corresponding plural class is Bantu4.

Examples

Bantu4: plural, plants, thin objects

The corresponding singular class is Bantu3.

Examples

Bantu5: singular, fruits, round objects, paired things

The corresponding plural class is Bantu6.

Examples

Bantu6: plural, fruits, round objects, paired things

The corresponding singular class is Bantu5, also Bantu9, Bantu11, seldomly Bantu1.

Examples

Bantu7: singular, things, diminutives

The corresponding plural class is Bantu8.

Examples

Bantu8: plural, things, diminutives

The corresponding singular class is Bantu7.

Examples

Bantu9: singular, animals, things

The corresponding plural class is Bantu10 or Bantu6.

Examples

Bantu10: plural, animals, things

The corresponding singular class is Bantu9.

Examples

Bantu11: long thin objects, natural phenomena, abstracts

Examples

Bantu12: singular, small things, diminutives

The corresponding plural class is Bantu13 or Bantu14.

Examples

Bantu13: plural or mass, small amount of mass

Examples

Bantu14: plural, diminutives

In Ganda, this is the plural counterpart of Bantu12.

Examples

Bantu15: verbal nouns, infinitives

Examples

Bantu16: definite location, close to something

Examples

Bantu17: indefinite location, direction, movement

Examples

Bantu18: definite location, inside something

Examples

Bantu19: little bit of, pejorative plural

Bantu class 19 may signify “a little bit of” or a plural with a pejorative nuance, as in Hunde.

Examples

Bantu20: singular, augmentatives

In Ganda, the corresponding plural class is Bantu6 or Bantu22.

Examples

Bantu21: singular, augmentatives, derogatives

Examples

Bantu22: plural, augmentatives

The corresponding singular class is Bantu20.

Examples

Bantu23: location with place names

Examples

Noun Classes in Wolof

Wolof is a non-Bantu Niger-Congo language. It has noun classes but their semantics cannot be easily mapped on the Bantu classes. The class is morphologically unmarked on nouns (although it is an inherent property of the lexeme) but determiners have to show agreement with the class.

The Wolof noun class system lacks semantic coherence. One reason for this is that in Wolof noun classification is sometimes based on other factors than semantics, including phonology and morphology. And still these are just some tendencies, but in most cases there is no clear semantics, phonology or morphology that can explain the classification in Wolof.

Examples

The following table shows the forms of proximate demonstratives in the first ten noun classes; classes 2 and 8 are plural, the rest are singular.

Wol1Wol2Wol3Wol4Wol5Wol6Wol7Wol8Wol9Wol10English
kigijibimilisiwi“this”
ñiyi“these”

Wolof classes 11 and 12, although behaving like noun classes, have meanings that are adverbial rather than nominal: class 11 is for location, class 12 for manner.

Wol11Wol12
fi “here”ni “so”

Wol1: Wolof noun class 1/k (singular human)

Examples

Wol2: Wolof noun class 2/ñ (plural human)

Examples

Wol3: Wolof noun class 3/g (singular)

Examples

Wol4: Wolof noun class 4/j (singular)

Examples

Wol5: Wolof noun class 5/b (singular)

For example, “dog” is in the b class.

Examples

Wol6: Wolof noun class 6/m (singular)

For example, “sheep” is in the m class.

Examples

Wol7: Wolof noun class 7/l (singular)

Examples

Wol8: Wolof noun class 8/y (plural non-human)

Examples

Wol9: Wolof noun class 9/s (singular)

Examples

Wol10: Wolof noun class 10/w (singular)

Examples

Wol11: Wolof noun class 11/f (location)

Examples

Wol12: Wolof noun class 12/n (manner)

Examples


NounClass in other languages: [u]