Gender system in Ashéninka Perené (Arawak)

The study describes gender system in Ashéninka Perené,1 of the Kampan subgrouping of Arawak, and presents preliminary results from fieldwork data collected in Ashéninka communities of southeastern Peru. The results show that Ashéninka Perené has a two-gender (masculine and non-masculine) system, as indicated by syntactic agreement of nouns with adjectives, demonstratives, possessive pronouns, locative-existential adverbs, and verbal cross-referencing markers. Ashéninka Perené does not have gender resolution; agreement is with the first conjunct only. The data point out that the third person singular pronouns have served as the source of the gender assignment rules