Individuation – a capacity to identify a discrete entity is a property of language and cognition. Individuation counts one item (1) and references an individual (human).
In languages like English, individuation is encoded in nouns (mass/count distinction) and in verbal number agreement with human referent nouns (Committee is/are...) (Corbett, 2002). However, this project is concerned with languages where individuated interpretation for non-human nouns interacts with a rich gender system. For example, Croatian (3 genders) certain nouns in neuter gender (mass noun) fit well with the generic context, but undergo a derivational change to masculine gender to reference individuals within a group (count noun) (lišće.neut “(pile of) leaves” > listovi.masc “leaves”) (Peti, 2004). In another family of rich gender languages such as Bantu (10 genders), Swahili, for example, encodes (at least) three degrees of individuation in its noun classification system (mi-ti.4 “trees” > u-nywele.11 “strand of hair” > ma-we.6 “stones”) (Contini- Morava, 2000). What is less known is whether the speakers of the 'gender' langauges are sensitive to the degrees of individuation posited not only for human but, in particular, for non-human nouns.
In linguistics, research on individuation in the nominal domain (human, non-human nouns) is largely concerned with asymmetries derived from counting (singular/plural, quantifier/numeral, mass/count distinction), even when languages do not encode a clear-cut binary contrast (1, not-1meaning more than one) in their nominal, or verbal, categories (student-students vs sand(*s)-grain of sand-bucket of sand). Therefore, investigating how human is grammaticalized in languages for the purposes of individuation is rarely explored. More concretely, no account posits a human (over count 1) metric on which to evaluate when counting human and non-human nouns, leaving the effects of human in categorisation and grammar (morpho-syntax) of, in particular, non-human nouns an underexplored research topic.
To address this theoretical interest, the project is set-up as a pilot study, which utilises a reading-comprehension task to collect the first experimental evidence of individuation as a function of a correlation human=individual=1, measured in the morpho-syntax of non-human nouns in Zulu - Bantu language, geographically distant but typologically comparable in nominal morpho-syntax to the Indo-European languages. The study is designed to experimentally establish speaker’s sensitivity to individuation in effect of its two key properties, perceptual (memory) and morpho-syntactic (cue) prominence. The applied method relies on an architecture of grammar grounded in a neuro-cognitive mind-brain continuum, required for creating interpretations of individuation from morpho-syntactic cues.
The results of the study should begin to answer: What is a basic metric for counting in non-human nouns? How is a countable (non-human) individual grammaticalized aside the use of a count unit = 1? What processes do languages employ to reduce the ambiguity of a (generic) expression to a single individuated referent? How do languages manipulate number and its dual nature to reference multiple counts of individuals within a group?
Collaborators:
Prof. Jochen Zeller, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, SA.
Dr. Bojana Ristić, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, EU.
Mfundo Didi, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, SA.
Jiamin Cheng, University of Oxford, UK
Funding: John Fell OUP Research Fund, Unveristy of Oxford.