Nominal classes in the Chukchi-Koryak languages in diachronic and typological perspective

Nominal classes, i.e. the category of grammatical gender, are signs of language complexity; such categories are mostly functionally empty, it is not a coincidence that they are absent in most languages of the world. In the Chukchi-Koryak languages, the original system of nominal classes was organized as a two-layered hierarchy according to the typologically adjusted parameters of «personality» and «referentiality». In this hierarchy, personal pronouns in the Ergative case form, not present in the nominal declension paradigm, possessed the highest ranking. Substantives and other pronouns were subdivided into referential and non-referential. Proper nouns and pronouns, other than personal ones, when they referred to persons, were considered to be referential. Referential nominals used Locative in the function of Ergative, non-referential Instrumental. The plural number was marked on referential nominals both in Absolutive and in oblique case forms; on non-referential ones only in Absolutive. Our analysis of Chukchi-Koryak texts recorded since the end of the 19th century until the beginning of the 21st century showed that personal pronouns did not move to another class, nor their class is getting expanded by substantives. These changes in the system of the nominal classes are linked to the second layer of their hierarchy: the original opposition of referential and non-referential nominals is being replaced by a typologically more frequent opposition of human - non-human, animate - non-animate, this indicates reduction in language complexity. The change in the system of nominal classes in the Chukchi-Koryak language occurs through the formation of an intermediate class of common nouns denoting people (in the southern dialects of the Alutor language - a class of animate common nouns). These nouns can use the paradigm of referential nominals in such syntactic contexts where the number of references is not marked by the predicate, or other elements of the construction. The nominals of this intermediate class in the Chukchi language and in original texts on the Alutor language can only take the plural marker; in translations from Russian to Alutor, and both in original and translated texts in the Koryak language, nominals of the intermediate class are used in singular as well as in plural number form.