Experimental evidence for semantic and morphophonological productivity in Kîîtharaka noun classes

In nominal classification systems, both form (i.e., morphology, phonology or both) and meaning often interact to determine the class or gender of the noun. In Bantu languages in particular, linguistic analysis has often put the emphasis on meaning, both inherent and evaluative (e.g., diminutive). However, recent quantitative studies have argued that both meaning and morphophonology – the ubiquitous nominal prefixes – serve as cues to class in Bantu, with their robustness and specific aspects potentially differing across individual languages. Here, we conducted an experimental study aimed at establishing whether speakers of Kîîtharaka (Bantu, E54) are sensitive to both semantics and morphophonology when classifying novel Kîîtharaka nouns. We used two wug-task-style experiments to establish whether particular aspects of meaning or form (here, nominal prefixes) would influence participants’ production of agreement on nominal dependents. Results showed that speakers are sensitive to two inherent features, Human and Fruit, and evaluative features like Augmentative, Pejorative and Diminutive. On the other hand, they are robustly sensitive to all morphophonological features tested when classifying novel nouns. Our results suggest that semantic features are generally less productive than morphophonology in the Kîîtharaka nominal classification system.