# Animacy-based nominal classification in northwestern Bantu and beyond

Francesca Di Garbo, Lyne Rahabi, Annemarie Verkerk

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Francesca Di Garbo, Lyne Rahabi, Annemarie Verkerk. Animacy-based nominal classification in northwestern Bantu and beyond. Ines Fiedler and Lee J. Pratchett. Areas, families, and pools aplenty: a Festschrift for Tom Güldemann, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, pp.163-179, 2025, 10.18452/32624. hal-05156422

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Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Francesca Di Garbo, Lyne Rahabi, and Annemarie Verkerk*

# Animacy-based nominal classification in northwestern Bantu and beyond

## 1 Introduction

The red thread that connects all involved in this contribution is an interest in the grammatical gender systems of the languages of sub-Saharan Africa, and, more specifically, in Bantu languages. More specifically, we are interested in the patterns of restructuring attested in the gender systems of a subset of Bantu languages spoken in the northwest region of the Bantu-speaking world and their relation to the systems of nominal classification attested in the broader Central African region. When we (Francesca and Annemarie) visited Berlin in 2017 to present and exchange with Tom (Güldemann) about our ongoing work on Bantu gender systems, Tom told us about Beeke (beek1238), a Bantu language with a heavily restructured gender system completely revolving around the encoding of animacy distinctions, which was described by Vorbichler (1963). For us, Beeke was an exciting, clearly innovative Bantu language; for Tom, (we think) it represented an exciting clue about the importance of animacy distinctions in the nominal classification systems of the languages of Central Africa. This common interest in animacy-based nominal classification culminated, for us, in two typological studies of gender restructuring in northwestern Bantu and, for Tom, in his recent paper on the role of animacy distinctions in Central African nominal classification systems (Güldemann 2023).

In order to assess the prevalence of animacy distinctions in the nominal classification systems of Central Africa further and to find out whether their spread could be contact-induced, we joined forces with Tom for WOCAL 10

<footnote>* Corresponding author: Francesca Di Garbo, Aix-Marseille Univ. – CNRS Parole et Langage (UMR7309). E-mail: francesca.di-garbo@univ-amu.fr.</footnote>

<footnote>To be cited as: Di Garbo, Francesca, Lyne Rahabi, and Annemarie Verkerk. 2025. Animacy-based nominal classification in northwestern Bantu and beyond. In: Ines Fiedler and Lee J. Pratchett (eds.), *Areas, families, and pools aplenty: a Festschrift for Tom Güldemann*, 163-179. Berlin: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. DOI: 10.18452/32624.</footnote>

<footnote>Appears in: Fiedler, Ines and Lee J. Pratchett (eds.). 2025. *Areas, families, and pools aplenty: a Festschrift for Tom Güldemann*. Berlin: Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. DOI: 10.18452/31543.</footnote>
in 2021. Our work on northwestern Bantu (Di Garbo & Verkerk 2022; Verkerk & Di Garbo 2022) was concluded but unpublished at that point. Tom contributed the work now published as Güldemann (2023) to the WOCAL 10 talk. But a true synthesis and testing of the contact hypothesis could not be reached then, partly because the two datasets that we were merging (our northwestern Bantu dataset and Tom's Central African dataset) did not fully overlap in terms of their coding design. In our northwestern Bantu survey, we sampled languages according to whether they displayed only formal gender agreement, that is, agreement with the lexical gender of nouns, or whether they also possessed some instance of animacy-based semantic agreement. In this earlier work, we approached animacy-based agreement in general terms only, meaning that we did not assess whether systems displaying semantic agreement made a distinction between animate and inanimate nouns, or rather between human and non-human nouns. In Tom's work on Central African nominal classification systems, this distinction between an animate-inanimate contrast and a human-nonhuman contrast is crucial, with the former emerging as a widely spread pattern in non-Bantu languages of the area. Thus, the plan was to look again at our Bantu languages with animacy-based agreement and re-assess their semantic cut-off points, animate-inanimate or human-nonhuman, so as to make our original dataset fully comparable with Tom's dataset.

Now that the SocioBaGS project<fnref n="1" /> has taken off, we were in a position to run this re-coding exercise, which was essentially conducted by our student assistant Lyne Rahabi (second author of this paper). In short: our gift for Tom on the occasion of his 60th birthday is an update of our northwestern Bantu dataset and a discussion of these new data in relation to his work on the animate-inanimate macrogender in Central African languages.

In Tom's work, the term macrogender is used to denote "the highest semantic level of nominal categorization", which "is thus conveyed frequently by grammatical phenomena other than agreement" (Güldemann 2023: 5), such as number or argument marking. <fnref n="2" /> In conservative Bantu nominal classification systems, the macrogender can be argued to be based on a human-nonhuman distinction: typically, gender 1/2 is associated with humans, while all other genders are not, in the sense that, while they tend to feature animate and 'nonhuman' nouns, these genders may also feature human nouns. In many of the Central Sudanic and Ubangi languages investigated by Tom, the macrogender is based on an animate-inanimate distinction. Both of these systems will be presented in detail below.

<footnote n="1">¹ https://sociobags.hypotheses.org/.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² This term goes back to Nichols (1992), who, however, uses it in a slightly different way, that is, with reference to solely agreement-based nominal classification systems.</footnote>
The definition of grammatical gender that we adopt in our work complies with the classical view in typology, where gender systems are nominal classification systems that are manifested through agreement (Corbett 1991). Throughout this paper, we will use the term macrogender in the sense proposed by Tom in his 2023 paper, that is, as a cover term for patterns of noun categorization that manifest themselves both through agreement *and* beyond agreement and that tend to revolve around maximally general animacy distinctions (animate vs. inanimate or human vs. nonhuman).

## 2 Animacy-based nominal classification in Central Africa

Our starting point is Tom's paper on animacy-based nominal classification systems in Central Africa (Güldemann 2023) and our own work on the typology of Bantu gender systems (Di Garbo & Verkerk 2022; Verkerk & Di Garbo 2022). Tom's 2023 paper is a survey on three families of Central Africa: Central Sudanic, Ubangi, and Bantu.<fnref n="3" /> It specifically surveys ways in which nominals are classified into classes of animate and inanimate nouns without necessarily displaying agreement. Examples of this phenomenon are, for instance, different plural markers for animate vs. inanimate nouns or an animate-inanimate distinction in the adpositional domain. This kind of behavior is attested in the Central Sudanic language Lese (lese1243, Vorbichler 1965: 90-91; we follow Tom's analysis here), which possesses two different goal postpositions, one for animate nouns (-bɔ) and one for inanimate nouns (-ni). As also outlined in the introduction, this linguistic behavior does not count as an instance of grammatical gender, a term which is rather used to single out nominal classification that is marked on one or more agreement targets. Tom proposes four types of animacy-based noun classification in Central Africa on the basis of his survey of Central Sudanic and Ubangi languages:

- Type A: These languages “single out animate nouns in some grammatical contexts but not in the pronominal system, for example, salient differential number encoding on the noun.” (37-38)

- Type B: These “languages involve an asymmetrical treatment of nouns through pronominal anaphor whereby referents lower on the nominal hierarchy, namely inanimate (or non-human) ones, display zero anaphor (or are resumed by a proform outside the pronoun paradigm like a demonstrative, a noun for 'thing' etc.)” (38).

- Type C: In these languages, the pronominal system is characterized by an overt animacy-based distinction between at least an inanimate third

<footnote n="3">³ Tom also surveys Central African forager languages, but as forager groups pre-historically shifted to members of the above-listed families, these do not constitute a separate group.</footnote>
person pronoun and at least an animate one (typically there are two; a singular one and a plural one).

- **Type D:** All other languages with more pervasive gender systems, that is, 1) systems which display macrogenders beyond the animate-inanimate distinction, for instance, by possessing sex-based or human-nonhuman distinctions; and/or 2) languages with gender agreement beyond pronouns, that is, characterized by more pervasive, agreement-based gender marking on other targets.

Aside from a few exceptions, all investigated Central Sudanic and Ubangi languages belong to one of these four types, showing that the categorization of nouns on the basis of an animate-inanimate distinction is pervasive in Central Africa. The picture is slightly different, but very much comparable, when it comes to the Bantu languages spoken in the area. In our previous work (Di Garbo & Verkerk 2022), we also identify four types of systems, named after numbers:

- **Type 1:** these languages feature a traditional Bantu gender system, with a human-nonhuman macrogender and multiple agreement classes, where the agreement prefixes index the lexical gender of nouns.

- **Type 2:** in these languages, alongside agreeing with the lexical gender of nouns, certain agreement targets may also index the animacy of the noun referent. For instance, all animate nouns may trigger agreement in gender 1/2 irrespective of their lexical gender.

- **Type 3:** in these languages agreement solely indexes the animacy of the noun referent. The agreement system is smaller in comparison to Type 1 and Type 2 languages in terms of number of targets. However, it is not necessarily restricted to pronouns; agreement with the verb and/or with different types of adnominal modifiers is attested in at least some of these languages.

- **Type 4:** these languages no longer have a productive gender system, in the sense of a nominal classification system manifested through agreement. Many of these languages may preserve fossilized remnants of the traditional Bantu system at the level of nominal morphology, but they no longer display productive agreement. Interestingly, in several of these languages animacy continues to be a relevant feature of nominal morphosyntax. For instance, number marking may be restricted only to animate nouns.

The different types of systems attested in northwestern Bantu mirror the situation of the Ubangi and Central Sudanic languages investigated by Tom. They show a spectrum of more or less pervasive strategies for singling out
animacy distinctions in different domains of nominal morphosyntax. In order to understand the distribution of the different systems attested in the area and the processes of change through which they emerged, it is crucial to know what is ancestral in these three families and in what direction languages have generally changed. In the case of Bantu languages, a pervasive system of gender marking (featuring both nominal inflections and agreement marking) is a reconstructed feature of the protolanguage, which has undergone drastic erosion only in a minority of languages of the family (Di Garbo & Verkerk 2022 and references therein). Ubangi languages likewise show evidence of gender systems being an inherited feature, given that animacy-based pronominal gender systems are attested in all genealogical (sub-)groupings (Güldemann 2023). However, gender is not an ancestral feature of Central Sudanic languages.

## 3 The evolutionary dynamics of macrogenders in Bantu

As Tom nicely summarizes in his 2023 paper, from a semantic point of view, traditional Bantu gender systems are organized around a human-nonhuman macrogender distinction. In such systems, the large majority of human nouns is lexically assigned to noun classes and gender 1/2, and the rest of the nominal lexicon is distributed across all other genders. Northwestern Bantu languages somewhat 'deviate' from this model in that some languages, like Beeke, possess a gender system that is solely organized around an animate-inanimate distinction, while others, like Lika (lika1243), present a split agreement system whereby animate nouns that are lexically assigned to genders beyond 1/2, may trigger agreement in gender 1/2 on some targets. Across Bantu languages, animacy-based agreement occurs most often in the verbal and pronominal domain, but sometimes everywhere. These distributions are in line with well-established typological tendencies for which the Agreement Hierarchy provides a generalization (Corbett 2006). In Tom's own terms, these innovations may be described as the result of two in principle independent types of changes: the restructuring of patterns of gender agreement, in terms of type and number of targets, on the one hand, and a shift in macrogender type, from a human-nonhuman contrast to an animate-inanimate one, on the other hand.

In our earlier work, we showed that these two processes may ultimately be connected to each other under what we called generalized animacy-based semantic agreement (Di Garbo & Verkerk 2022). This is the phenomenon whereby semantic agreement is not only restricted to animate nouns, but also extends to inanimate nouns, which start triggering the same agreement patterns irrespective of their lexical gender. In Di Garbo & Verkerk (2022), we showed that the highly eroded gender systems attested in our
northwestern Bantu sample tend to display two genders and revolve around animacy-based distinctions. We thus suggested that these systems represent the result of a shift in macrogender type, coupled with a massive erosion of the traditional inventory of agreement classes and target types. Three languages of our northwestern Bantu sample actually demonstrate this relationship in the form of ongoing patterns of variation and change. The languages in question are Mpiemo (mpie1238), Bibaka Ukhwejo (ukhw1241), and Lika, all spoken in the northern-most Bantu borderlands.

In Mpiemo and Bibaka Ukhwejo, while the traditional system of nominal inflections and agreement marking is still in place, animacy-based semantic agreement is an option, attested with all agreement targets and involving both animate and inanimate nouns. In Mpiemo, animate nouns have the option of triggering agreement in gender 1/2, while the pairing 7/8 is used for inanimate agreement (Thornell 2010). Similarly, in Bibaka Ukhwejo, the pairing 1/2 is associated with animate nouns and the agreement prefix of class 7, y- is used to mark agreement with inanimate nouns, irrespective of their lexical gender (Thornell 2012).

In Lika, alongside with traditional gender marking which persists on most targets, gender agreement on the verb revolves around an animate-inanimate opposition, Animate nouns trigger the use of the *a-* prefix in the singular and the *b-* prefix in the plural, while inanimate nouns trigger the *a-* prefix, irrespective of whether they are marked as singular or plural. This is shown in the examples given in (1).

(1) Lika (Bantu; de Wit 2015: 298, 299, 462, 283)

a. mu-kó á-pung-á ndì ká-ìzunzíny-á
1-woman 3SG.AN<sup>p</sup>-start-FV<sup>p</sup> P<sub>3</sub> 9b-REFL-complain-FV
'The woman started to complain.'

b. 6o-mbǔ 6ó-pik-og-o 6a-ndábu na 6e-nvunvú
2-bird 3PL.AN-build-PL-FV 2-9.house with 2+9:9a-moss
'Birds build nests with moss.'

c. kó ngbíngó 6é-motí áka, 1-ngbólɔ́ á-pung-a
PREP 1a.time 1NUM-one CT 9a-dugout 3SG.INAN-start-FV
kó-mw-óg-ó líbó
9b-drink-PL-FV 5:water
'Suddenly, the dugout started to make water.'

d. ma-čakǐ á-pung-a kó-púmúk-ó bí-kpǒ kpo kpo
6-pot 3PL.INAN-start-FV 9b-burst-FV MOD-kpo kpo kpo
'The pots started to break “kpǒ kpo kpo”.'
In sum, the three languages mentioned above show that animacy-based semantic agreement may be diachronically connected to the pervasive erosion of gender marking if it climbs down the animacy hierarchy by also affecting inanimate nouns. Interestingly, in our northwestern sample, such systems are only attested close to the northern border, where bipartite animate-inanimate gender systems abound. Conversely, in the majority of northwestern Bantu languages where animacy-based agreement is attested, inanimate nouns continue to trigger agreement in their lexical genders, and only animate nouns converge towards one semantically motivated agreement pattern (that of gender 1/2). For a detailed overview, see Di Garbo & Verkerk (2022).

While the data presented above provide a possible explanation of the relationship that may exist between the erosion of gender marking and a shift in macrogender distinctions, what our earlier work does not fully explain is how and why the latter happens in the first place. As already mentioned in the introduction, our original dataset does not directly allow us to answer this question because it does not feature a systematic coding of the semantic cut-off points of animacy-based agreement: is the distinction animate-inanimate or rather human-nonhuman?

In order to address this shortcoming and to make our northwestern Bantu dataset fully comparable with Tom's Central African dataset, we recoded those languages of our sample that display animacy-based agreement as well as those which have completely lost gender. The latter was done in order to check whether, even in the absence of gender, any coding of animacy still affects aspects of nominal morphosyntax such as number marking. The recoding was carried out by Lyne Rahabi, student assistant at Aix-Marseille University, in July 2024. Annemarie and Francesca took responsibility for the recoding of the genderless languages as well as the analysis of the newly coded data. This updated dataset is found on Zenodo.<fnref n="4" />

In a nutshell, for the languages classified as Type 2, 3 or 4, we went back to the sources and coded whether animacy-based agreement was based on one or several of the following types of contrast:

- Contrast 1:

One animate agreement class vs. One inanimate agreement class

- Contrast 2:

One animate agreement class vs. Multiple inanimate agreement classes

- Contrast 3:

One human agreement class vs. One nonhuman agreement class

- Contrast 4:

One human agreement class vs. Multiple nonhuman agreement classes

<footnote n="4">⁴ https://zenodo.org/records/14012797.</footnote>
A total of 57 languages (40 belonging to Type 2, 13 to Type 3, and 4 to Type 4) were recoded.<fnref n="5" /> All four contrast types are attested in the sample, and some languages even display a combination of several types.

In our original Type 3 languages, that is, languages with exclusively semantic gender assignment, the most frequent type of contrast (attested in 8 out of 11 languages) is the one which displays one agreement class for animate and one agreement class for inanimate nouns. A human-nonhuman contrast with nonhuman nouns collapsed in one class is attested in Nzadi (nzad1234, Crane et al. 2011), Kari (kari1306, Dijkmans 1974; Santandrea 1963) and possibly Bodo (bodo1272, Santandrea 1963) though the sources available for the latter are extremely scanty and do not allow for a full assessment of this language.

Type 2 languages show some structured variation. In the majority of these languages (22 out of 40), animacy-based semantic agreement follows Contrast 2, with animate nouns triggering agreement in gender 1/2 and inanimate nouns distributed across multiple agreement classes based on their lexical gender. In these languages, as is typical of Bantu gender systems, syntactic agreement, that is, agreement with the lexical gender of nouns, is based on a human-nonhuman distinction.

In 9 of the remaining 18 languages the cut-off point for semantic agreement is human-nonhuman: human nouns that are lexically assigned to genders other than 1/2 trigger semantic agreement in class 1/2 and nonhuman nouns are distributed across multiple classes. This is the case of Sira (sira1266), for which the source reports that human nouns lexically assigned to gender 9/10 or 7/8 trigger agreement in gender 1/2 on the verb (Dodo-Bounguendza 1992: 209). Sira thus displays a typical system of semantic agreement, with the main difference, as compared to the previous type, being that it is human nouns rather than animate nouns that trigger it.

In a few other Type 2 languages classified as displaying a human-nonhuman contrast with nonhuman nouns distributed across multiple classes, a different process seems at stake, notably, differential object marking. The literature on object indexation in Bantu is extremely vast. Generally speaking, patterns of object indexation appear to be constrained by a set of topicality hierarchies, which have been recently surveyed by Wald (2022). Here, we simply report on those cases in which the systems of object indexation attested in the languages of our sample appear to contribute to the larger picture of the macrogender profiles as defined and understood by Güldemann (2023). For instance, in Yaka (yaka1269, van den Eynde 1968; Kyota 1999),

<footnote n="5">⁵ In the process of recoding, we found that the two varieties of Kituba included in our sample both have pronominal gender. We thus recoded them as Type 3 languages, which reduced the number of Type 4 languages in Di Garbo & Verkerk (2022) from six to four.</footnote>
nouns lexically belonging to class 1/2 take an object infix on the verb, while all other nouns take a suffix indexing their lexical gender. This phenomenon cannot be described as a typical instance of semantic agreement, in that it mostly pertains to the domain of argument indexation, and it seems to affect only nouns lexically assigned to gender 1/2. However, we cannot exclude that it may play a role in the way in which the semantic reanalysis of systems of gender marking takes off in some cases (on the role of gender inflections in differential argument marking, see Witzlack-Makarevich & Seržant 2018).

A similar case is found in San Salvador Kongo (sans1272, Bentley 1887; Mfuwa 1995), where overt object indexation on the verb is associated with nouns assigned to gender 1/2, while the object is zero-marked with all other nouns. According to Mfuwa (1995: 161), gender 1/2 is exclusively associated with human nouns, but some human nouns may be found in other genders. It is not clear from the source whether human nouns that do not belong to gender 1/2 may trigger object indexation. A somewhat different scenario is attested in Tuki (tuki1240, Biloa 2013; Hyman 1980), where object inde- xation is said to be restricted to semantically human nouns. While a thorough description of the semantic content of the individual genders is missing for Tuki, the list of nouns lexically assigned to gender 1/2 provided by Hyman (1980: 27) features both human and non-human nouns. In a way then, these three languages display a kind of human-nonhuman contrast where (semantically) human nouns or human nouns assigned to gender 1/2 behave the same with respect to object indexation, as opposed to all other nouns.

Yet another scenario, where Type 2 languages have animacy-based agree-
ment built on the animate-inanimate contrast, and where inanimates also
converge towards one agreement class, is the one instantiated by Lika, Bibaka
Ukhwejo and Mpiemo, which we discussed earlier on in this section. Finally,
we find three Type 2 languages with multiple types of contrasts for animacy-
based agreement. In Bwa (bwaa1238, Mangulu 2005), semantic agreement
on third person pronouns is based on a human-nonhuman contrast, with
nonhuman nouns triggering agreement in multiple genders. Conversely, in
the verbal domain subject agreement can sometimes be based on an animate-
inanimate contrast, with all inanimate nouns in one class (marked by the
prefix -i-). However, as the source points out, the most common type of
distinction that is marked on the verb is simply a distinction between singular
and plural subject nouns, with class 1/2 prefixes being used as generalized
number markers (-a- for the singular and -ba- for the plural; Mangulu 2005:
76-77). In Mongo (mong1338), semantic agreement seems to feature a
combination of a human-nonhuman and an animate-inanimate contrast. The
human-nonhuman is related to patterns of agreement on the verb, in that
human nouns lexically assigned to gender 1/2 or 9/10 trigger the use of the
primary prefix series on the verb, while all other nouns trigger the use of the
secondary prefix series (Hulstaert 1965: 306, 305, 315). On the other hand,
the animate-inanimate contrast is related to animal nouns, which are treated
as gender 1/2 nouns in story-telling (Hulstaert 1966: 16). The latter
phenomenon is not exceptional from a pan-Bantu perspective; names
denoting personified animals tend to function as proper names and, therefore,
to be attracted to agreement class 1, which is typical for proper names (Van
de Velde 2019: 241). Finally in Sakata (saka1287), there is classic animacy-
based agreement of the animate-inanimate type, with inanimate nouns in
multiple classes while a human-nonhuman contrast is related to object
indexation (de Witte 1955).

In sum, a few important patterns emerge from this recoding exercise.
Firstly, in our northwestern dataset, animacy-based semantic agreement
manifests itself in multiple ways depending on two intersecting dimensions:
(1) whether the animacy contrast is animate-inanimate or human-nonhuman;
(2) whether semantic agreement is restricted to nouns denoting entities at the
top-level of the animacy hierarchy (animate and human) or whether it climbs
down the hierarchy by being associated with both animate and inanimate
nouns or both human and nonhuman nouns. The majority of languages
displaying animacy-based agreement opt for an animate-inanimate
distinction, with inanimate nouns still triggering agreement in their lexical
gender. Generalized animacy agreement, where all inanimate nouns trigger
agreement in only one class, irrespective of their lexical gender, tends to be
found in languages displaying highly eroded gender systems. Its co-
occurrence with traditional syntactic agreement is less common, but also
attested, as in Lika.

Overall, the human-nonhuman distinction is a less common blueprint for
semantic agreement in northwestern Bantu. We may speculate that this is
possibly due to the fact that this distinction is also the macrogender type for
syntactic agreement patterns, which reflect the lexical gender of nouns and
are unanimously considered to be inherited from Proto-Bantu. When semantic
agreement is based on a human-nonhuman contrast, two scenarios are
attested in our sample. Under the first scenario, attested in Tuki, a form of
human-nonhuman semantic agreement is confined to the domain of object
indexation, where human nouns are differentially marked and nonhuman
nouns are either zero-marked or marked based on their lexical gender. Under
the second scenario, attested in Sira, human-nonhuman semantic agreement
is used outside the domain of object marking, with human nouns that are
lexically assigned to genders other than 1/2. Only under the first scenario do
nonhuman nouns appear to be conflated under one type of marking (zero-
marking of the object). Otherwise, they always trigger agreement in their
lexical gender. The fact that, in some languages, such as Mongo, these two
types of semantic agreement, animate- and human-based, do coexist, may
suggest that their diachronic trajectories are somewhat different, something
to which we return in the next section.

4 Contact-induced changes towards the animate-
inanimate macrogender

In order to assess the geographic spread of the two macrogenders (animate-inanimate and human-nonhuman) in the languages of Central Africa, we present a map comprising the re-coded Bantu data, and the Central Sudanic and Ubangi data from Güldemann (2023). Regarding the latter, we used the Appendix of Tom's paper but added several languages that were discussed in text but not included in the Appendix. Since we have more detailed data on Bantu, we ignore the Bantu languages that were included in the Appendix. These were all classified as 'Type D' in Tom's terms, that is, as languages with highly pervasive patterns of gender marking. The map centers around the distinction between the following types:

- **no AN-INAM MG:** In a way, these are 'Type 0' languages that do not display any behavioral evidence of an animate-inanimate macrogender in Güldemann (2023). There are a few of these within Central Sudanic and Ubangi, but none in Bantu, as our Type 4 languages either have some behavioral evidence of an animate-inanimate macrogender or there is no data. This category is essential in assessing the limits of the geographic spread of the animate-inanimate macrogender.

- **AN-INAN MG:** These are, for Central Sudanic and Ubangi, Tom's Type A, B, and C languages, and for Bantu, those Type 2, 3, and 4 languages that show an animate-inanimate distinction (see Section 3), either in parallel with agreement with the lexical gender of nouns or without it.

- **HUM-NOH MG:** For the Central African languages, we find here exclusively Ndunga (ndun1249). Ndunga is a very interesting case as it is the only Ubangi language in Tom's sample to have a human-nonhuman macrogender instead of an animate-inanimate one. Almost all Bantu languages (except those with severely restructured gender systems) can be said to have a human-nonhuman macrogender, as gender 1/2 typically differentiates human nouns from all other nouns in Type 1 and 2 languages. Here we distinguish between our Type 1 languages on the one hand and Type 2, 3, and 4 languages on the other, with the main difference being that Type 1 languages only have traditional gender agreement (Di Garbo & Verkerk 2022). Type 2, 3, and 4 languages that show a human-nonhuman distinction in animacy-based agreement are also included here.
- **AN-INAN MG and HUM-NOH MG:** Here we find for Central Sudanic and Ubangi, Tom's Type D languages and, for Bantu, languages like Mongo that have different animacy-based agreement patterns, one involving an animate-inanimate distinction and another involving a human-nonhuman distinction. As mentioned above, importantly, Mongo displays both patterns of animacy-based agreement, in addition to agreement with the lexical gender of nouns.

The intersection between the animate-inanimate macrogender and the human-nonhuman macrogender emerges from the map shown in Figure 1 through a striking geographical pattern.<fnref n="6" /> The animate-inanimate macrogender is highly pervasive in Central Sudanic, Ubangi, and Gbayaic. The only languages that do not engage with it (in yellow in Figure 1) are clustered in the northwestern corner of the DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo). Across the border in the Bantu-speaking lands, the animate-inanimate macro-gender is also strikingly common, especially in languages surrounded by Central Sudanic, Ubangi, and Gbayaic languages (e.g., Mpiemo, Ukhwejo, Lika, and others not marked on the map). However, Bantu languages with an animate-inanimate contrast go as far south as Kimbundu (kimb1241), seemingly following, at least in part, the Congo River. There are outliers too: Lefa (lefa1242) in the west, surrounded by Bantoid languages, and possibly Ndumu (ndum1239).

<footnote n="6">⁶ As for Figure 1, language polygons are taken from the world Language mapping System (Global mapping International, 2015. World language mapping system, version 17. Colorado Springs, CO (http://worldgeodatasets.com)) and constructed on the basis of language materials. White areas represent uninhabited land or bodies of water and, in the north, non-sampled languages.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1** Areal distribution of the animate-inanimate and human-nonhuman macrogenders in western central Africa.</figcaption></figure>
The human-nonhuman contrast is the default macrogender distinction in all Bantu languages assigned to Type 1, that is, those languages that only display agreement with the lexical gender of nouns. These languages reflect the gender system reconstructed for Proto-Bantu and are still pervasively attested across all the Bantu-speaking area. These languages are marked in light pink in Figure 1. They form two highly homogeneous hubs to the west and the east of the northwestern region, with an interesting corridor of languages where animacy-based agreement is also attested, in the form of a secondary human-nonhuman contrast in the domain of object marking (San Salvador Kongo) or a full human-nonhuman contrast (Nzadi), where no trace is left of the traditional agreement system. San Salvador Kongo seems to be at the center of a hub of languages that display animacy-based agreement with a human-nonhuman contrast, attested in Vili (vili1238), Suundi (suun1239), Congo Kituba (kitu1245), Yaka (yaka1270), Suki, a variety of Yansi (yans1239), Sira (somewhat removed), and Nzadi where no traces of lexical gender agreement are left. Yet, the animate-inanimate contrast is found in this area in Kaamba (kaam1238), Lingala (ling1263), and Ding (ding1239) as the only contrast, while in Kimbundu (kimb1241) and Laari (laar1238), it is joined by the marking of a human-nonhuman contrast.

While contact-induced change still seems the most likely hypothesis for the origin of the animate-inanimate macrogender in languages close to the northern Bantu border (see Verkerk & Di Garbo 2022), there are several developments to explain: (1) the spread of the animate-inanimate contrast into the heart of the northwestern Bantu region and its marked geographic pattern, matching the course of the Congo River; (2) the emergence of a secondary human-nonhuman distinction beyond lexical gender agreement in a hub of languages in the southern areas of the Republic of the Congo; and (3) animacy-based agreement in languages that are far removed from either of these zones; such as in Lefa and Tuki (tuki1240). Given the latter, it seems likely that animacy-based agreement of both types has arisen multiple times. However, given both the band of languages with an animate-inanimate macrogender along the Congo River and the prevalence of human-nonhuman animacy-based agreement in the southern areas of the Republic of the Congo, diffusion probably accounts for at least part of the spread of these phenomena.

In order to better understand these distributions, one would need to examine the targets that are involved in animacy-based agreement, the syntactic behavior of inanimate and nonhuman nouns (see Section 3), as well as further aspects of the nominal classification system, including the merging of classes and changes in patterns of gender assignment of certain groups of nouns. In the SocioBaGS project, we aim to tackle these outstanding questions from a historical-comparative point of view, while at the same time investigating in
detail another hub of animacy-based agreement, namely the east African coast (Wald 1975).

# 5 Conclusion

Compiling an updated version of our earlier northwestern Bantu dataset in line with Tom's work on Central Sudanic and Ubangi languages (Güldemann 2023) has made clear that Bantu animacy-based restructuring can be classified in multiple ways (see Section 3): (1) as mapping an animate-inanimate distinction on top of the nominal classification system that revolves around a human-nonhuman distinction and that is marked through syntactic agreement (as in Lika); (2) as mapping an animate-inanimate distinction and a human-nonhuman contrast on top of syntactic agreement (as in Mongo); (3) as replacing the human-nonhuman distinction completely (as in Bila); and (4) as displaying a bipartite system solely based on a human-nonhuman contrast (as in Nzadi). This makes it entirely possible that, instead of a single pathway of restructuring, there are multiple ways in which animacy-based agreement can start to play a role and hence, also multiple pathways for the animate-inanimate macrogender to emerge. In addition, while the emergence of a human-nonhuman contrast on top of syntactic agreement is perhaps not surprising given that human-nonhuman is an important ancestral and contemporary distinction in Bantu, it nevertheless requires explanation as well.

Within the sampled northwestern Bantu-speaking area, animacy-based restructuring is spread all across the northern Bantu borderlands, while, elsewhere, it seems to follow a diagonal line from the northeast to the southwest of the region. How far south this line goes is an open question that we aim to tackle in future work. For now, what this study strongly suggests is that the ‘human-based’ and the ‘animate-based’ contrasts are an important feature of nominal classification systems of central Africa, and that their co-occurrence is particularly striking within Bantu.

# Acknowledgments

This work has been carried out within the framework of the ANR-23-FRAL-0004 and the DGFG 529007750 SocioBaGS project, supported by the French National Research Agency and the German National Research Agency. We thank Rita Popova, Antti Laine and Mark Van de Velde for the feedback provided on earlier versions of this manuscript.
## Abbreviations

3SG third person singular

3PL third person plural

AN animate

CT contrastive

FV Final Vowel

INAN inanimate

MOD prefix of bí-modifier

NUM numeral

P₃ time reference, earlier than about a week ago

PL plural

PREP preposition

REFL reflexive

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