The two concurrent gender systems of Mba

Abstract

This paper describes the gender system of the Ubangi language Mba, which can be characterized by the co-existence of two different classification systems. The ‘formal agreement’ system is tightly bound with the nominal deriflection system, while the ‘semantic agreement’ system, by contrast, emanates from a tripartite distinction in the language made between masculine humans, other animates, and inanimates. Whereas formal agreement is manifested on different elements that modify the head noun, the semantic agreement system operates in the pronominal domain, mostly outside the noun phrase.

A typology of northwestern Bantu gender systems

“…We next turn to Figure 8 that displays the typological classification we presented in Section 4.2 on the tips of a phylogenetic tree, combined with reconstructions of gender system type on the internal nodes of the tree. For 29 See also the recent contribution by Fiedler et al (2021) on the gender system of the Ubangi language Mba (mfc), spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The gender system of Mba is organized around two main patterns of agreement: syntactic agreement, whereby agreement patterns are largely determined by the different classes nouns are formally allocated to, and animacy-based agreement, which is entirely predictable on semantic grounds, based on the opposition between masculine humans and other animates in the singular (this distinction is neutralized in the plural where the same anaphoric pronoun is used for all plural animates).…”