Gender in Uduk

Uduk, a Koman language spoken on the border of Ethiopia and Sudan, evinces a
number of unusual characteristics in its system of gender marking. Uduk has two
gender classes, with agreement displayed primarily in the verbal system and ad-
jacent case-marking particles. In contrast to related Koman languages, however,
semantics play a minimal role in class assignment, unrelated to biological sex. Fur-
thermore, as biological sex does not play a role in gender assignment in general,
personal pronouns do not differentiate gender in any person. Instead, all personal
pronouns are assigned to Class 1 in the same manner that nouns would be. Lastly,
Uduk shows some unorthodox aspects in the way it indexes gender on verbs, using
what might be considered subtractive morphology.
This article looks at the complexity and features of gender in Uduk from a typolog-
ical perspective; despite some unorthodox and atypical typological features, how-
ever, the system does not appear to be complex.