1. Dezember 2026, 16:00 Uhr

Anfang Dezember ist Clinton Parker, PhD von der Nazarbayev Universität in Astana zu Gast am AAI. Im Rahmen seines Aufenthalts hält er auch im Forschungskolloquium für Doktoranden und Masterstudierende (IFUU/IRom) einen Vortrag zum Thema “Semantic Gender Assignment in Shughni: On the Role of Meronymy and Thematic Categorization”.

Die Veranstaltung findet wie folgt statt:

Datum: 1.12.26
Uhrzeit: 16 bis 18 Uhr
Ort: Raum Phil A 11005

Abstract:
Semantic Gender Assignment in Shughni: On the Role of Meronymy and Thematic Categorization
In Shughni, an Eastern Iranian language of Tajikistan and Afghanistan, gender assignment is largely determined by semantic criteria. Previous descriptions have identified roles for thematic categorization (e.g., liquids are feminine, diseases are masculine) and conceptual distinctions such as abstract vs. concrete and mass vs. individual. One particularly unusual proposal is that gender assignment is sensitive to conceptual meronymy (part–whole relations), with whole entities (e.g. mošīn ‘car’) tending to be feminine and their constituent parts (e.g. karburātor ‘carburetor’) masculine.
This talk presents the results of a psycholinguistic experiment designed to test the productivity of this proposed meronymy principle. Sixty-eight native speakers of Shughni were presented with sixteen Russian technological loanwords in one of two conditions, either as a component of a larger object (i.e. part condition) or as a standalone device (i.e. whole condition). Participants completed a production task requiring them to assign gender to each word by selecting gender-marked demonstrative forms.
The results reveal a statistically significant but small effect of meronymy, with feminine assignment slightly more frequent in the whole condition. However, the effect varies across items and does not interact with lexical familiarity, casting doubt on meronymy as a productive principle of gender assignment. Instead, the findings suggest that the previously observed part–whole pattern emerges from the interaction of thematic categorization, masculine default assignment, and other properties of the gender system.
The study illustrates how experimental methods can help evaluate proposed semantic principles of gender assignment in under-documented languages.