{"id":482,"date":"2018-10-11T11:57:05","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T11:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/?p=482"},"modified":"2018-10-11T11:57:05","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T11:57:05","slug":"optimal-categorisation-how-do-we-categorise-the-world-around-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2018\/10\/11\/optimal-categorisation-how-do-we-categorise-the-world-around-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Optimal Categorisation: How do we categorise the world around us?"},"content":{"rendered":"

People love to categorise! We do this on a daily basis, consciously and subconsciously. When we are confronted with something new we try and figure out what it is by comparing it to something we already know. Say, for instance, I saw something flying through the air \u2013 I may think to myself that the object is a bird, or I may say it is a plane based on my previous experiences of birds and planes. Of course the object may turn out to be something completely new, perhaps even superman!<\/p>\n

\"\"
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it\u2019s Superman!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our love of classification runs deep in scientific enquiry. Botanists and zoologists classify plants and animals into different taxonomies. Even the humble linguist loves to classify \u2013 is this new word a noun or a verb? What about the new word zoodle <\/em>that was recently added to the Merrriam Webster dctionary? Is it a thing? Or an action? Can I zoodle<\/em> something or is it something I can pick up and touch? Well apparently zoodle <\/em>is a noun which means \u2018a long, thin strip of zucchini that resembles a string or narrow ribbon of pasta\u2019. To be honest, I love eating zoodles, though until now I never knew what they were called!<\/p>\n

The way people classify entities around them has become encoded in the different languages we speak in many different ways. The most obvious example that springs to mind is when we learn a new language, like French or German, we are confronted with a grammatical gender system. French has two genders \u2013 Masculine and Feminine. But German has three \u2013 Masculine, Feminine and Neuter. Other languages can have many more gender distinctions. Fula, a language spoken in west and central Africa, has twenty different gender categories!<\/p>\n

So what exactly are grammatical gender systems and how are they realised in different languages? Gender systems categorise nouns into different groups and tend to appear not on the noun itself, but on other elements in the phrase. In German, nouns are split into three different gender categories \u2013 masculine, feminine and neuter. The gender of a noun is shown by using different articles (the word \u2018the\u2019 or \u2018a\u2019) and sometimes by changing the ending of an adjective, but never on the noun itself. Thus the word for \u2018the\u2019 in German is either der, die or das <\/em>depending on whether the noun in the phrase is masculine, feminine or neuter.<\/p>\n

(1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 der<\/em><\/strong> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mann<\/em>
\n              the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 man<\/p>\n

(2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 die<\/em><\/strong> \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Frau<\/em>
\n              the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 woman<\/p>\n

(3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 das<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Haus<\/em>
\n               the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 house<\/p>\n

This is called \u2018agreement\u2019 as the adjectives and articles must agree with the gender of the noun. In a language with gender, each noun typically can only occur in one gender category.<\/p>\n

Not every language has a grammatical gender system, but they are highly pervasive, with around 40% of all languages having such a system. English is quite a poor example when it comes to gender. There is no real gender agreement in English, with the exception of pronouns. We have to say: Bill walked into the grocers. He<\/strong> bought some apples<\/em>. Where the pronoun he <\/em>must agree with the gender of the noun that was previously mentioned. English uses he, she<\/em> and it<\/em> as the only markers of gender agreement.<\/p>\n

Languages behave differently in how they allocate nouns to the different genders, which can be very baffling for language learners! Why in French is chair feminine, la chaise,<\/em> but in German it is masculine, der Stuhl<\/em>? How a language allocates nouns to its gender categories can seem somewhat arbitrary \u2013 with the exception of the words for women and men, which fall into the feminine and masculine genders being the only semantically obvious choices.<\/p>\n

But wait! If you thought the English gender system was dull, think again! A couple of months ago my piano was being restored and when it was being moved back into the lounge the piano movers kept saying: \u201cpull her<\/strong> a little bit more\u201d and \u201cturn her<\/strong> this way\u201d. The movers used the female pronouns to describe the piano. In English, countries, pianos, ships and sometimes even cars use the feminine pronouns.<\/p>\n

Grammatical gender isn\u2019t the only way languages classify nouns. Some languages use words called classifiers to categorise nouns. Classifiers are similar to English measure terms, which categorise the noun in terms of its quantity, such as ‘sheet of paper’ vs. ‘pack of paper’ or \u2018slice of bread vs. \u2018loaf of bread\u2019. Classifiers are found in languages all over the world and are able to categorise nouns depending on the shape, size, quantity or use of the referent, e.g. \u2018animal kangaroo\u2019 (alive) vs. \u2018meat kangaroo\u2019 (not alive). Classifier systems are very different to gender systems as nouns in a language with classifiers can appear with different classifiers depending on what property of the noun you wish to highlight. There are many different types of classifier systems, but to keep things short I am just going talk about possessive classifiers, which are mainly found in the Oceanic languages, spoken in the South Pacific.<\/p>\n

When an item is in your possession we use possessive pronouns in English to say who the item belongs to. For instance if I say \u2018my coconut\u2019 \u2013 the possessive pronoun is my. <\/em>In many Oceanic languages a noun can occur with different forms for the word my<\/em> depending on how the owner intends to use it. For instance the Paamese language, spoken in Vanuatu, has four possessive classifiers and I could use the \u2018drinkable\u2019 if I was talking about my coconut that I was going to drink. I would use the \u2018edible\u2019 classifier if I was going to eat my coconut. I would use the classifier for \u2018land\u2019 if I was talking about the coconut growing in my garden. Finally, I could use the \u2018manipulative\u2019 classifier if I was going to use my coconut for some other purpose \u2013 perhaps to sit on!<\/p>\n

(4)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ani\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 mak<\/em>
\n               coconut\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 my.drinkable
\n               \u2018my coconut (that I will drink)\u2019<\/p>\n

(5)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ani\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 ak<\/em>
\n               coconut\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 my.edible
\n               \u2018my coconut (that I will eat)\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Why do languages have different ways of categorising nouns? How do these systems develop and change over time? Are gender systems easier to learn than classifier systems? Are gender and classifiers completely different systems? Or is there more similarity to them than meets the eye? These are some of the big questions in linguistics and psychology. We are excited to start a new research project<\/a> at the Surrey Morphology Group, called optimal categorisation: the origin and nature of gender from a psycholinguistic perspective,<\/em> that seeks to answer these fundamental questions. Over the next three years we will talk more about these fascinating categorisation systems, explain our experimental research methods, introduce the languages and speakers under investigation, and share our findings via this blog. Just look out for the \u2018Optimal Categorisation\u2019 headings!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People love to categorise! We do this on a daily basis, consciously and subconsciously. When we are confronted with something new we try and figure out what it is by comparing it to something we already know. Say, for instance, I saw something flying through the air \u2013 I may think to myself that the object is a bird, or I may say it is a plane based on my previous experiences of birds and planes. Of course the object…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,4,18,67,64,10,2,65,68,63,66,70,5],"tags":[],"coauthors":[62],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-categorisation","category-english","category-french","category-fula","category-gender","category-german","category-morphology","category-noun-class","category-oceanic-languages","category-optimal-categorisation","category-paamese","category-possession","category-typology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions\/492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}