FUNCTIONAL VARIATIONS OF THE SO-CALLED FEMININE MARKER IN ARABIC

and diachronic points of view. The present article can only touch on some of the most pro-vocative issues of these studies. Its proper aim is to propose a short synchronic survey of the most outstanding functional variations of the suffix-a /-at in a number of linguistic systems of Modern Written Arabic and some of its colloquial varieties. 1. The inflectional category of gender played an important role as a classifi-catory criterion in a number of languages with a not quite clear genetic relation-ship. The membership of a language in the Hamito-Semitic (Greenbergs Afro-Asiatic) linguistic family, for instance, has frequently been considered as co-gently proved by the mere presence of gender therein. In this context, the Hamito-Semitic gender, possibly correlated with the extra-linguistic category of sex, was usually opposed to the Bantu system of non-gender nominal classes. With some investigators (Lepsius, Meinhof), the relative importance of sex-gen-der, as a classificatory criterion, was exaggerated to such an extent that it led to patently erroneous results. C. Meinhofs classification of Hottentot as a Hamitic language may well illustrate the misuse of this classificatory approach (Green-berg 1966: 43-44).1 The evolutionary relationship between non-gender nominal classes and gen-der classes has been seriously studied by Semitologists and Arabicists as well. According to some of the widely accepted hypotheses, advanced to this effect, Semitic gender may have evolved from non-gender nominal classes (Brockel-manns Wertklassensystem: 1908:404), still reflected in a number of deriva-tional classes, and their relationship to the biological category of sex, in noun