# Non-contextual uses of gender-number agreement markers and the emergence of orphan agreement markers in Atlantic languages

Denis Creissels

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Denis Creissels. Non-contextual uses of gender-number agreement markers and the emergence of orphan agreement markers in Atlantic languages. 1ère Rencontre annuelle Langues et langage à la croisée des disciplines, Sep 2024, Paris, France. hal-04914132

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Non-contextual uses of gender-number agreement markers
and the emergence of orphan agreement markers
in Atlantic languages

Denis Creissels

University of Lyon

denis.creissels@univ-lyon2.fr

http://deniscreissels.fr

It has been observed that, in the history of languages having grammatical gender systems, a gender may disappear completely from the noun system while surviving in the pronominal system, cf. e.g. Butt & Benjamin (1994) on neuter pronouns in Spanish. This presentation deals with languages whose history is not documented (the Atlantic languages of West Africa), but in which some pronouns and adverbs can be analyzed as keeping track of former genders that have been lost in the nominal system.

A common type of morphology-syntax mismatch in Atlantic gender systems is the existence of ORPHAN GENDER-NUMBER AGREEMENT MARKERS, affixes that occupy the same morphological slot as bona fide agreement markers but are not involved in agreement mechanisms.

For example, in Jóola Fóoñi, most of the inflected forms of -ceen 'some' can modify a noun, as in a-seeɛk a-ceɛn 'some woman', ko-seeɛk ko-ceɛn 'some women', e-suk e-ceɛn 'some village', si-suk si-ceɛn 'some villages', etc, or be used pronominally with reference to an antecedent, as in a-ceɛn 'some X' (X a noun of gender A/BK to be retrieved from the context), si-ceɛn 'some Xs' (X a noun of gender E/S to be retrieved from the context),<fnref n="1" /> etc. However, two of the inflected forms of -ceɛn (di-ceɛn 'something' and ni-ceɛn 'sometimes') are semantically autonomous, cannot be explained with reference to the nouns for 'thing' and 'time' (since the regular noun-modifier constructions 'some thing' and 'some time' would be w-aafʊ-ceɛn and θ-waati e-ceɛn), and more generally cannot be used as noun modifiers at all.

This phenomenon can be analyzed as having its origin in the development of NON-
CONTEXTUAL USES of agreement markers. Forms inflected for agreement normally combine
with an overtly expressed controller, or imply reference to a potential controller to be
retrieved from the context. However, in Atlantic gender systems, they commonly also have
NON-CONTEXTUAL uses. For example, in Wolof, forms consisting of the agreement marker l-
'singular of gender L/Y' and the stem -ii 'this' or -an 'which?' can modify nouns (cin l-ii 'this
pot', cin l-an 'which pot?) or occur in contexts in which they are interpreted as 'this one' and
'which one?' with reference to a particular noun of gender L/Y to be retrieved from the
context, but they can also express vague reference to inanimate entities without any
contextual conditioning, as in (1), where the context plays no role in the interpretation of l-ii
as 'this (thing)', and of l-an as 'what?'.

<footnote n="1">¹ Genders are conventionally designated by means of pairs of capital letters that evoke the phonological form of their characteristic agreement markers in the singular and in the plural.</footnote>
L-ii l-an la?

L-this L-which it.is

'What is this?'

In some cases, a possible explanation is that, in the absence of a particular controller suggested by the context, a hypernymous noun belonging to the gender in question acts as a default controller. However, synchronically, such an explanation is not always possible, which means that, diachronically, the non-contextual use of an agreement marker may be maintained after the hypernymous noun with reference to which the non-contextual use developed has disappeared from the lexicon or changed its meaning.

Once an agreement marker has acquired a non-contextual use, it may happen that not only the noun originally responsible for its non-contextual use, but more generally all its potential controllers disappear from the lexicon, or are assigned to other genders, and this is how agreement markers can become orphan agreement markers that are not involved in agreement mechanisms anymore, and independently contribute to the meaning of the words in which they can be found.

References

Butt, J. & C. Benjamin. 1994. Neuter article and pronouns. In: *A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish*. Springer, Boston, MA.

Creissels, Denis & Konstantin Pozdniakov (eds.). 2015. *Les classes nominales dans les langues atlantiques*. Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe. 371-405.

Corbett, Greville. 1991. *Gender*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Corbett, Greville. 2006. *Agreement*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.