Derivational gender in Moroccan Berber: examples from Ayt Seghrushen

Abstract Berber languages have a two-term gender opposition. Most nouns are allowed to appear in both genders, expressing meaning differences such as natural gender and size. Nouns have a neutral gender value, which is lexically determined, and a derivation which is marked by the opposite gender. In the case of size differences, this leads to a ternary opposition (diminutive – neutral – augmentative), expressed by only two genders. The grammatical constraint on the number of values is sometimes circumvened by using different allomorphs of gender morphemes. With a number of sub-classes of nouns a ternary opposition is made possible by a change in morphological sub-class.