Grammatical gender without adjective agreement

[jmcd]

I do believe there are some languages which have grammatical gender but have no agreement between adjectives and nouns. Does anybody know of any?
I am asking because I think (basilectal and some mesolectal varieties of) Réunion Creole would count as such but I feel it is easier to make the case for such a position if there are similar to which one can point.

[Richard W]

I presume your definition rules out English.

Classifiers have a lot in common with gender. In Thai, classifiers appear with singular demonstratives and with numbers; I don't know if you count these as adjectives. What are commonly call adjectives in Thai are arguably verbs, though there seem to be a few true common adjectives. Thai dictionaries list cardinal numbers as nouns.

[2+3 clusivity]

I suppose you could have a language where verbs show gender agreement with A/S/O depending on the alignment but no (apparent) agreement of adjectives with nouns' gender.

Such a system could emerge as follows:

Code: Select all

Step | Verb Marking ------------- Adjective Marking ------------- Nominal Marking
1st  | adjective-like ----------- nominal-like ------------------ gender.number mandatory
-----------------------------------Reanalysis----------------------------------
2nd  | gender.number ------------ nominal-like ------------------ gender optional and number mandatory
3rd  | gender.number ------------ nominal-like ------------------ gender absent and number mandatory

Given verbs' preference for person marking, perhaps it would only appear in an alignment split.

I guess a better question is, are we talking about a system where adjectives ALSO do not show number agreement with their nominal? I.e. no apparent agreement between nouns and adjectives, but apparent agreement between verbs and nominal?

[Richard W]

Coptic and arguably Welsh come close. The two languages have the typical Atlantic gender opposition of masculine v. feminine, and both have only vestigial remnants of feminine and plural inflection on adjectives. The plural inflection is optional in both, while I believe the feminine forms are mandatory in Welsh. There are two features which potentially spoil this claim.

Welsh attributive adjectives under go the soft mutation after a feminine singular adjective. Now you could require this as a mutator attached to the feminine singular noun that only takes effect on a following adjective.

Coptic adjectives in -os use a form in -on for inanimate nouns. If you pursue this argument, you are arguing that Coptic actually has a 2-D grammar system - masculine v. feminine, and animate v. inanimate. These adjectives are Greek loanwords.

[WeepingElf]

Coptic adjectives in -os use a form in -on for inanimate nouns.

Are the Coptic -os/-on adjectives loans from Greek?

[zompist]

Agreement can involve almost anything: adjectives, numbers, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adpositions.

Agreement on pronouns but not adjectives is common enough, and English is indeed an example.

[vokzhen]

Depends on what counts and adjectives, what counts as grammatical gender, and what counts as agreement. Burushaski is probably the closest (that I've found) to what you want, it's got extensive case marking, polypersonal agreement including gender in 3rd persons, but adjectives aren't inflected except for plurals. Gender isn't nearly as arbitrarily assigned between male-female(-neuter) as in Indo-European, however, but a male-female-animate-inanimate system (though, as is generally the case, there are a few oddities considered "animate" that aren't).

Abkhaz and Abaza have gender agreement, again on a more semantic male-female-nonhuman system, but adjectives don't agree with it. They can agree in number like Burushaski, though: with inanimate references only the last element (usually the adjective) takes the plural, while with animate references plurality is co-referenced on both noun and adjective unless the adjectives precede the noun in which case only the last (i.e. the noun) takes the plural.

Then you've got languages like most/all of the Algonquin family that lack adjectives altogether, but have stative/attributive verbs that agree in gender because they're verbs.

[Richard W]

Coptic adjectives in -os use a form in -on for inanimate nouns.

Are the Coptic -os/-on adjectives loans from Greek?

As I said, yes they are.

[WeepingElf]

Coptic adjectives in -os use a form in -on for inanimate nouns.

Are the Coptic -os/-on adjectives loans from Greek?

As I said, yes they are.

Oh, sorry, I overlooked that.

[jmcd]

Thanks for all the answers so far. The information about Burushaski and Coptic is particularly interesting.

[Richard W]

Welsh attributive adjectives under go the soft mutation after a feminine singular adjective.

Correction: Read "feminine singular noun" for "feminine singular adjective".