Gender Distinctions in Independent Personal Pronouns (Feature 13)
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Feature Annotation
Here we ask about gender distinctions in independent personal pronouns. Independent personal pronouns, in contrast to bound forms (i.e. clitics and affixes), are separate words capable of taking primary stress and which can be used in answers, as in French Qui est arrivé hier? - Lui. ‘Who arrived yesterday? - He.’, as opposed to the bound form Il est arrivé. ‘He arrived.’
We look at independent pronouns because all languages have them, whereas there are languages that lack dependent pronouns.
Gender oppositions in personal pronouns are characteristic of the third person rather than the first or second person. Moreover, gender is seen as being typical of singular rather than non-singular personal pronouns, but this is not the case in all languages.
Note that we define gender as any kind of lexical subdivision of nouns that is reflected in agreement patterns, i.e. “noun classes” of the Bantu type, or animacy classes of the Algonquian type, also count as gender, even though they do not involve sex.
Additional remarks
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Values
| Value | Value Annotation | |
| 1 | No gender distinctions | Ternateño eli ‘he, she, it’ |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Gender distinctions in 3rd person singular only | Norf'k Hi tal shi kamen. ‘He said she was coming.’ |
| 3 | Gender distinctions in 3rd person non-singular only | Dagaare (Ghana) maa ‘1sg’ oo ‘2sg’ onɔ ‘3sg’ tenee ‘1pl’ yεnee ‘2pl’ bana ‘3pl.hum’ ana ‘3pl.nonhum.’ |
| 4 | Gender distinctions in 3rd person only, but in both singular and non-singular | French lui '3sg.m' vs. elle '3sg.f' and eux '3pl.m' vs. elles '3pl.f' |
| 5 | Gender distinctions in 3rd person plus 1st and/or 2nd person | Hausa nī ‘1sg’ kai ‘2sg.m’ kē ‘2sg.f’, shī ‘3sg.m’ ita ‘3sg.f mū ‘1pl’ kū ‘2pl’ sū ‘3pl’ |
| 6 | Gender distinctions in 1st and/or 2nd person but not 3rd | Iraqw (Tanzania) aníng ,1sg’, kúung ,2sg.m’ kíing ,3sg.f’, inós ,3sg’, atén ,1pl’, kuungá ,2pl’, ino ín ,3pl’. |
| 7 | Other | E.g. Cape Verdean only in honorific second person singular pronouns: nho or anho ‘you (m.)’ vs. nha or anha ‘you (f.)’; plural nhos or anhos stands for both masculine and feminine. |
WALS No.
44 (Total)
