Les classes nominales en tuwari (Nouvelle-Guinée)

Abstract

This article describes noun classes in Tuwari, a Papuan language of Papua New Guinea. The exponents of gender are clitics, realized once per clause-level phrase, and always at their right periphery. In noun phrases, the exponent is a gender-agreeing article, while on verb phrases it is a subject index. This agreement system is uncanonical since it brings into play a set of complex syntactic rules. As in other Papuan languages, such gender markers used at the periphery of the noun phrase share formal and semantic properties with markers of subordination.