Considerations on the Grammatical Gender Category in Mehináku (Arawak)

Abstract

In this paper, we present some considerations regarding the gender category in Mehináku. Although further research is necessary to gain a deeper understanding of the behavior of this class in the language, our findings indicate that Mehináku lexicon is divided into two subgroups based on semantic criteria such as animacy and humanness: one comprising nouns with the features [+animate, +human], and the other with [+animate, –human] features. Nouns belonging to the first group require morphological marking and exhibit distinct morphemes for human feminine and masculine gender. The morphemes -hɨ ‘masculine’ and -tu ‘feminine’, for example, are the only ones for which two grammatically distinct gender forms are attested in Mehináku. Other nouns, when gender is assigned, are only morphologically marked for the feminine, causing the gender opposition to be neutralized. These nouns are marked with the suffixes -neʂu and -lu. On the other hand, nouns with –human features, belonging to the second group, do not receive morphological gender marking. In these cases, gender distinction is expressed solely through lexical items that indicate biological gender in the language, such as the words enɨʂa ‘man/male’ and tɨneʂu ‘woman/female’.