Re: Fijian gender

Trebor wrote:

> Over at the ZBB, during a discussion of (grammatical) gender, this was
> said:
> "There's gender in Fijian ... at least one of them is called "edible"
> gender
> ... and like the genders of German, they manifest themselves in the
> articles
> rather than the words themselves. Since Fijian is an isolated member of
> the
> Oceanic family, it's hard to compare it to anything. I don't know how the
> Fijian gender system arose."
>
> Anyone have any information on this?
I'm not sure we'd want to call that gender-- it's related to possession, so
wouldn't necessarily cover all nouns.

Fijian distinguishes 4 types of possession:  (1) inalienable (body parts,
probably kin terms, probably some other things); (2) alienable
(things that one can possess or obtain for one's use)-- these two categories
are common in many languages of Oceania, Eastern Indonesia (Moluccan area)
and of course elsewhere in the world; assignment to one or the other
category is often flexible.  The other two are more or less unique to Fijian
(3) edible, (4) drinkable-- clearly these last two are fairly restricted as
to what they can refer to.

Inalienable: the various possessive forms are suffixed

For the others, the poss. suffixes go on special bases, which then precede
the noun in question:

Alienable (or general): the suffixes are attached to no-
Edible: attached to ke-
Drinkable: attached to me-

There can be some overlap: noqu devu 'my sugarcane' (e.g. to sell), mequ
devu 'my sugarcane' (to "drink" i.e. suck on); and perhaps yate/qu 'my
liver' vs. kequ yate 'the piece of liver I can eat'-- it may be that these
categories so exited the early researchers because when first contacted, the
Fijians were still cannibals.

ke- and me- are derived historically from the words for 'eat' and 'drink';
no- is relatable to the Proto-Austronesian possessive marker *ni

I don't have a grammar of Fijian, but the dictionary notes that ke- (edible)
forms can be used with things characteristic of a person.

There is at least one other Austronesian language with an "edible"
category-- Selaru, spoken in the Tanimbar islands way in the east of
Indonesia; who knows, there may be others in that still-poorly-described
neck of the woods.

> Trebor
> ...who would like to welcome Carol to the list!
Ditto!! Perhaps our new Oceanist knows of other languages in the area that
have an "edible" etc. category.