Nominal classification from a typological perspective

Abstract The chapter aims to provide an overview of how nominalization manifests itself cross-linguistically in the grammars of the world’s languages. Drawing on the seven types of noun-classification devices of gender/noun-class systems, noun classifiers, numeral classifiers, possessive classifiers, verbal classifiers, locative classifiers, and deictic classifiers, it discusses tentative generalizations on the semantic criteria that apply to these types. It also addresses more complex issues relating to the systematization of classification systems in languages with markers that combine the function of two or more devices, and in multiple-classifier languages where two or more classification devices coexist. This discussion also includes classifiers as targets or even as controllers of agreement. In its diachronic part, the chapter presents scenarios of grammaticalization for various noun-classification devices, paying particular attention to two divergent scenarios for gender/noun-class system, one for Indo-European and the other for Niger-Congo. The chapter ends in a short assessment of more recent statistical findings on the diffusion of classification devices within families and across families through contact and migration.