The overall attitude towards maintaining competence in these languages is positive, and there is a considerable number of young people who are still fluent. This survey underlines the role of the home in the language maintenance process. Y. Aikhenvald Australian National University Diana Green Summer Institute of Linguistics, Brazil Abstract. This article describes an unusual and complicated system of genders and classifiers in Palikur, a northern Arawak language spoken in Brazil and French Guiana. There are two or three gender choices depending on construction type.
Classifiers provide cross-categorization of nouns and help the language to structure concepts.
Throughout the article, Palikur gender and classifiers are placed in typological perspective.