The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics Part 72. In the past decade, Cognitive Linguistics has developed into one of the most dynamic and attractive frameworks within theoretical and descriptive linguistics The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is a major new reference that presents a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical concepts and descriptive/theoretical models of Cognitive Linguistics, and covers its various subfields, theoretical as well as applied. | 680 GUNTER SENFT nominal subject. The nominal modifier for the class 10 noun di-perekisi takes a class 10 relative prefix tse-mondte see also Aikhenvald 2000a 63-65 Senft 2000b 15 . Gender systems which are found in Indo-European and Semitic languages for example are defined by Corbett 1991 4-5 as the type of nominal classification which is reflected beyond the nouns themselves in modifications required of associated words . The determining criterion of gender is agreement this is the way in which the genders are reflected in the behavior of associated words in Hockett s definition. Saying that a language has three genders implies that there are three classes of nouns which can be distinguished syntactically by the agreement they take. It is not only adjectives and verbs which can show agreement in gender but in some languages adverbs agree in other numerals and sometimes even conjunctions agree in gender. Taking agreement as the defining criterion for gender see also Royen 1929 526-27 756-58 implies for Corbett 1991 5 that there are no grounds for drawing a distinction between languages in which nouns are divided into groups according to sex and those where human nonhuman or animate inanimate are the criteria. Thus many languages described as having noun classes fall within our study on gender see also Dixon 1986 105-7 Senft 2000b 15-16 Unterbeck and Rissanen 2000 . Languages with gender obligatorily classify all their nouns into formal classes. Gender systems are the most limited systems of nominal classification with respect to the number of their classes. Grinevald 2000 56 illustrates the limited semantic motivation of assignment to classes beyond that linked to the sex of animates. by the different gender assignments of the name of common objects in French and Spanish French Spanish un mur m una pared f a wall ld fourchette f el tenedor m the fork Allan 1977 291 even states that by and large European gender is semantically empty. However more recent work on .
