Up to two-thirds of African languages have a system of noun classification of some sort. This paper proposes an alternative approach to the noun class system of the Dagaare and Akan languages based more on an interaction between morphology and phonology than on semantics. Dagaare and Akan are two West African languages that exhibit mainly suffixal…

Many moments that humans see naturally suggest something other than themselves. This is a legacy from the remotest time. Among animals, movements of prey and predator give each an indication of what may happen next and a basis for choosing their own actions. As species evolved, the movements that could be made and the meanings that could be…

While all languages use shape to classify unfamiliar objects, some languages as diverse as Mandarin, Thai, Japanese, Mohawk, and American Sign Language lexicalize these and other types of description as noun classifiers. Classification does not develop from a fixed set of features in the object, but is discourse-sensitive and invoked when it would…