Investigando as marcas de gênero do Tétum-Díli: mane, feto, aman e inan como classificadores nominais

Abstract

This research describes and analyzes the markers mane, feto, aman, and inan in Tetun Dili (TD), interpreted as gender in the language, aiming to investigate their formal status and to propose a syntactic structure capable of explaining the behavior of these formations. As a starting point, we draw upon the existing debate in the literature, which is divided between classifying these gender formatives as derivation (Hull & Eccles, 2005; Belo & Oliveira, 2021) or compounds (Costa, 2015; Choupina, 2011). Although derivation and compounds are traditionally viewed as distinct wordformation processes, the boundaries between these processes are not always clear. Empirically, deepen this debate, we rely on the linguistic criteria systematized by Gonçalves and Andrade (2016), which provide a set of properties commonly associated in the literature with derivational and compound formation, considering properties of various natures, such as the status of the forms involved in the wordformation process, the structural properties of the analyzed formations, as well as their phonological and semantic properties and the criteria of productivity and creation of these forms. Based on this, we propose that mane, feto, aman e inan in TD exhibit an ambiguous behavior, with some properties aligning with compounds and others closer to derivation. We suggest that this duality of behavior can be explained by the hypothesis that the markers mane, feto, aman, and inan are undergoing a process of grammaticalization. More specifically, we propose that, in the forms where they are interpreted as gender, these elements have transitioned from independent nouns to nominal classifiers. Nominal classifiers are linguistic units that categorize a noun by denoting a salient characteristic of the entity to which the associated noun refers (Grinevald, 2002). In TD data, the lexical origin of mane, feto, aman, and inan is evident in the fact that these elements can be used independently with a conceptual content distinct from the gender interpretation. On the other hand, their grammaticalized status can be identified in some morphosyntactic functions these elements take on, such as licensing coreference, anaphoric relations, and definite reading, for example. Furthermore, based on the properties outlined in Aikhenvald (2002) and Grinevald (2002), the classifier status of mane, feto, aman, and inan aligns with the fact that their use is not obligatory, meaning that these elements do not apply to all nouns in the language. To deal with the formalization of mane, feto, aman, and inan, based on the Distributed Morphology model (Halle & Marantz, 1993; Marantz, 1997), we propose that these noun classifiers in TD are adjuncts that do not project their label in the structure. In this way, they modify the base noun, but they do not project its label or determine the formal properties of the structure.