Gender and Noun Classification

This volume explores the many ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into genders or classes. The findings in the volume have significant implications for syntactic theory and theories of interpretation, and contribute to a greater understanding of the interplay between inflection and derivation.

Eric Mathieu is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Ottawa. His research focuses on French (Modern and Old) and the Algonquian language Ojibwe. His work has appeared in journals such as Linguistic Inquiry, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Lingua, and Probus, and he is the co-editor, with Robert Truswell, of Micro-change and Macro-change in Diachronic Syntax (OUP, 2017).

Myriam Dali is a PhD student at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests include the syntax and semantics of number and gender, the structure of the DP, the singulative, and the diachronic evolution of number marking systems. She has recently worked on the competition between plural forms in Tunisian Arabic. Her work has been published in Lingvisticae Investigationes and she has a book in preparation with John Benjamins.

Gita Zareikar is a PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa. Her research interests include the syntax and semantics of bare nominals and number interpretation in general number languages. She focuses on the syntax of noun phrases and more specifically on the evolution of classifiers in non-numeral-classifier languages. She has recently been working on telicity and viewpoint aspect and its interaction with number and specificity. Her work has been published in Linguistic Variation and in the conference proceedings of NELS 46 and CLA 2015.