Colette Grinevald (DDL): "About a “working typology” of classification systems: the challenge of NW Amazonian systems"
NW Amazonian systems of nominal classifications have posed a challenge to the establishment of a typology of classification systems since the early work of Derbyshire and Payne (1990). Various positions have been taken to characterize them (Aikhenvald 2003, Seifart and Payne 2007 inter alia). The talk will address the concept of a working typology that situates the diverse propositions in time/space as well as sociolinguistic context (Grinevald and Seifart 2004), consider the widespread ongoing terminological confusion (Grinevald 2000, 2015) and offer some ways of finding a place for the hybrid systems typical of the region within a general typology of classification systems.