Discussant : 

Nina Sumbatova, Université Russe d'Etat des Humanités, Moscou

Abstract :

Grammatical gender is a pervasive category in the Nakh-Daghestanian languages (Comrie, 2013); its members possess between two and five gender classes, which can be marked on certain verbs (agreeing with the nominative argument), as well as on some adjectives, adverbs and numerals (agreeing with their head). Gender assignment principles are specific for each language, but are known to be primarily based on semantic factors, while phonology may be a secondary influence. A typical four-gender Nakh-Daghestanian language features a gender for male humans (M), one for female humans (F, see (1a)), and two for animals and inanimates (see (1b)), here named for their agreement markers: B, D, J. The latter two classes display more fine-grained sub-divisions, such as animals in the third class and liquids in the fourth (Klimov 1978: 67; Corbett 1991: 25ff).

(1a)    Sanzhi Dargwa (Forker, 2020)