Noun classes in African and Amazonian languages: Towards a comparison COLETTE GRINEVALD and FRANK SEIFART Linguistic Typology 8 (2004), 243–285 1430–0532/2004/008-0243 c Walter de Gruyter Abstract Many Amazonian systems of nominal classification have been perceived as constituting a descriptive and typological challenge. The proposal presented here is to consider many of them as emerging noun class systems rather than as a-typical systems that defy integration within an overall typology of nominal classification, at the opposite end from the Niger-Congo systems on a contin- uum of grammaticalization. First the African noun class systems are reviewed, with an emphasis on the sociolinguistic context of their descriptions and on their common deviations from a prototypical image of them projected in the general linguistic literature. Then a recapitulation of various proposals of a- typicality of the Amazonian systems is given, followed by the presentation of a typology of nominal classification systems that integrates the dynamic dimen- sion of grammaticalization. The application of this typological framework is illustrated with a case study from the Miraña language of Colombia. Keywords: agreement, Amazonian languages, classifier, concord, gender, grammaticalization, Miraña, Niger-Congo languages, noun class, number, numeral classifier 1. Introduction The original impetus for a comparison of African and Amazonian linguistics came from the need to respond to the descriptive challenge encountered by field linguists facing the wealth of nominal classification systems of the languages of the Amazon region. It was a decision taken with some sort of a priori assump- tion that there was no particular reason why languages in the Amazon region should be any more “exotic” and indecipherable than languages of other parts of the world. The feeling was that the claimed exoticism of Amazonian sys- tems (as, for instance, in Payne 1987, Derbyshire & Payne 1990, Aikhenvald