Wikidata:Property proposal/noun class

noun class

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Lexemes

   Done: noun class (P7165) (Talk and documentation)

Description	noun class of the lexeme, use "grammatical gender" (P5185) where applicable
Represents	noun class (Q1598075)
Data type	Item
Domain	lexeme or form
Example 1	umuntu (L37485) → 1 (with abantu the plural in noun class 2)
Example 2	ubuntu (L37486) → 14 (abstract)
Example 3	impala (L37487) → 9 (and izimpala as plural in noun class 10)
Example 4	(L37488) → 6 (amanzi; mass noun in plural, has no singular)
Planned use	Adding noun classes to Bantu nouns
See also	grammatical gender (P5185)

Motivation

Nouns in the Bantu (Q33146) have noun classes rather than grammatical genders. This property would be used like grammatical gender (P5185) to indicate the noun class of words. It could be used by other languages that have noun classes, so it's better not to tie down the format too strongly. There could be items for each class, or the property could be just a string. Bantu noun classes are typically numbered, or named after the prefix that it uses in each language. I'm not sure which is better in the long run, probably items.

I indicated that the property could appear on either lexemes or forms. That's because in the Bantu languages, each class is inherently singular or plural, and the singular and plural of a noun always belong to different noun classes. I figure that the property may be placed on the singular and plural forms, but it could also be placed twice on each noun lexeme, once for the singular class and once for the plural class, with qualifiers to tell which is which. Yet another possibility is to create items representing each pair of singular-plural classes, but of course we'll need single classes anyway for nouns lacking a plural or a singular, like ubuntu (L37486) (class 14, an uncountable noun) or (L37488) (class 6, a plurale tantum). My preference is for the two-values-with-qualifiers approach.

—Rua (mew) 12:08, 16 November 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

•  Support Definitely should be item valued. ArthurPSmith (talk) 18:03, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
  • @Rua: Actually do we need a property for this? If it's applied at the form level wouldn't it just be one of the "grammatical features"? ArthurPSmith (talk) 18:06, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
    • Yes, but it would be annoying to have to repeat the noun class for each form. Putting it on the lexeme makes more sense I think. —Rua (mew) 21:40, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Comment The term is unusual, but at a higher abstraction level, these are typically considered to be literally just a specific subset of grammatical gender (P5185). It doesn't help that "noun classes" are often used for unrelated properties outside the bantu languages (I'm not aware of a language having both noun classes and a separate grammatical gender system, though that's theoretically possible). Circeus (talk) 13:58, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
  • It's the other way around. Genders are a specific kind of noun class system. That's what grammatical gender (Q162378) reflects as well. We could rename "grammatical gender" to "noun class" but I think that would cause a lot of confusion. —Rua (mew) 14:51, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
• @Rua: is it possible to find a label that more clearly describes the type of noun class this is for? Would you also update the sample to item-based ones? --- Jura 07:53, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support as item-valued, but marking as not ready while the datatype and examples need updating in the proposal template. − Pintoch (talk) 21:04, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
•  Support Pamputt (talk) 05:46, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
•  Comment I added a cross-reference to grammatical gender (P5185) in the description. --- Jura 14:29, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

@Jura1, Pamputt, Rua, ArthurPSmith, Circeus:  Done: noun class (P7165) − Pintoch (talk) 08:16, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

• @Rua: please create the corresponding value items and add the examples to noun class (P7165) − Pintoch (talk) 08:17, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

  What about using 1 (Q199), 2 (Q200) instead of creating new items? Pamputt (talk) 08:00, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

  @Pamputt: What would you suggest we do with Zulu's classes 1a and 2a? —Rua (mew) 10:44, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

  Indeed, good point. Thus, we need new items for each class. Pamputt (talk) 10:58, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

•  Comment Currently, it's on Form; see e.g., unyaka (L686326), with new items for each class, but only a few have been added so far, by way of experimenting. A list of requirements for a model to do this systematically throughout Wikidata was presented as the Wiki Workshop in 2022 in an abstract. Comments are welcome! Especially if there are more requirements that we may have missed or if you have a strong preference for one requirement or the other. Keet10 (talk) 17:34, 22 July 2022 (UTC)keet10