Gender in Walman

In this paper, I describe gender and gender-like phenomena in Walman, a language
of the Torricelli family spoken on the north coast of Papua New Guinea. I discuss
three topics. One of these is the two clear instances of gender in Walman, mascu-
line and feminine. I discuss the formal realization of gender in Walman and the
factors governing the choice of masculine versus feminine gender.
There are also two gender-like phenomena in Walman, namely pluralia tantum
nouns and a diminutive category. Pluralia tantum nouns in Walman are different
from pluralia tantum nouns in European languages in that what makes them gram-
matically plural is not their form, but the fact that they control plural agreement.
What makes pluralia tantum gender-like is that there are twice as many pluralia
tantum nouns in our data as there are nouns that are lexically masculine.
The second gender-like phenomenon in Walman is a diminutive category, which is
coded in the same way as feminine singular, masculine singular, and plural. What
makes it unlike phenomena that are normally considered instances of gender in
other languages is the fact that there are no lexically diminutive nouns and any
noun can be associated with diminutive agreement.