The synchronic and diachronic typology of basic semantic gender assignment: a comprehensive assessment of African languages

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Tom Güldemann
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 577556706

The project goal is a comprehensive typological study of gender systems in African languages, including systems based only on gender-sensitive pronouns, which is dedicated to the assessment of semantic nominal assignment. Against the background of the assumed principal distinction of sex-based vs. non-sex-based systems in previous typological work, the research focusses in particular on less systematically studied assignment principles based on animacy and humanness and their relation to each other as well as to sex~social gender. In previous approaches prioritizing the sex-based opposition, the incidence of animacy- and human-based gender assignment has been backgrounded and we foresee that it has in fact been underestimated. Furthermore, looking at three rather than one semantic criterion leads to a richer and more fine-grained typological grid of basic types of semantic gender assignment, the distribution of which the project will assess systematically for the African continent. We want to achieve this goal by means of a complete study of African linguistic lineages based on a newly compiled project database. Of 111 language groups in Africa, 74 have been found to possess languages with a gender system, which will be investigated regarding the type of basic semantic assignment. This will include the search for cases of so-called “concurrent nominal classification”, that is, the existence of more than one gender system in a lineage or even a single language. The results of the synchronic research on cross-linguistic typology will in turn enable us to investigate the dynamics of gender assignment over time. Within this diachronic typological approach, we want to identify possible regularities regarding which assignment systems tend to emerge first and how different systems can either expand further or retract to simpler ones. Moreover, the historical-comparative method will be applied to selected language families. Last but not least, the synchronic and diachronic findings will feed a comprehensive areal typological study that also includes quantitative methods. This targets the modern distribution of different semantic assignment systems in Africa, in particular, the geographically clustered recurrence of types and the contact-related interaction of languages both within such zones and at their borders. The systematic and multifaceted investigation of semantic gender assignment in Africa ultimately aims at a revised typology of this domain on a global level.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants