Gender in Khoe
The Khoe languages of southern Africa are spoken mainly in Namibia and Botswana, smaller groups are also found in Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. A list of these languages and their genetic sub-classification is found in (1).
(1)
Typological characteristics of Khoe are the presence of a ‘rigid’ word-final (SOV) syntax, of four click consonants ( = dental, = lateral, = palatal, and ! = alveolar click), and of a gender system. Gender marking is achieved by means of portmanteau morphemes which simultaneously express gender (masculine, feminine, and common), number (singular, dual, and plural) and person (first, second, and third person; Köhler 1962; Vossen 1997). Following Hagman (1977:16, 42) I will refer to these morphemes as pgn markers or, in short, as pgn’s, an abbreviation standing for ‘person-gender-number forms’. The wealth of pgn markers characteristic of these languages is illustrated in (5), where the pgn suffixes on personal pronouns reconstructed by Vossen for Proto-Khoe are presented (a list of the abbreviations used is found at the end of this paper; for more information on pgn’s in the various Khoe languages, see Köhler 1962; Vossen 1997; 1994).
(2)
There is some variation in the use of these markers, both language-internally and cross-linguistically. For example, most third person pgn’s have two forms each, a long one and a short one. Further, instead of ba (b in the Khoekhoe branch) there is a third person masculine singular pgn ma in a number of languages; the reader is referred to Köhler (1962) and Vossen (1997) for details.
These markers occur in various positions in the clause, e.g. as affixes or clitics on nouns, nominal modifiers, or within the verb phrase, or as self-standing pronouns. A characteristic of most, if not all, Khoe languages is the fact that nouns and nominal modifiers can occur either with or without a pgn suffixed to them. In some cases there are clear rules on the occurrence of these markers, but in many other cases, no rules have been found.
It is not possible to deal with all the various contexts in which pgn’s are used; rather, my interest in these markers will be restricted to their use as enclitics or suffixes on three kinds of words within the noun phrase. These words are adjectives, demonstrative attributes, and personal pronouns. The selection is determined mainly by the availabilty of comparative data.
It is not possible either to deal here with all the languages listed in (4), not only because this would exceed the size a paper but also because for most of these languages no grammatical data are available. The languages looked at and the respective sources consulted are: Hiechware (Dornan 1917), Kxoe (Köhler 1973, 1981, 1989, 1991), and Naro (Bleek 1928; Maingard 1961; Barnard 1985; Vossen 1997). The exact linguistic identity of Hiechware is unclear. Following Dornan (1917), Köhler calls it ‘the Tati Bushman language’ (1962:529) and appears to equate it with his Tywa language (1962:535). Whether Hiechware is in fact the same as what is variously called Tatí, Tetí, Tsetí, Deti, etc. is open to question (cf. Vossen 1997).
