Abstract Categorization retains its key importance in research on human cognition. It is an intellectual area where all disciplines devoted to human cognition – psychology, philosophy, anthropology, and linguistics – intersect. In language, categorization is not only a central part of lexical structure but is also salient in systems of nominal classification, notably gender and classifiers. Recent years have seen great progress in the description and analysis of nominal classification systems, so that we are now in a position to offer an account of such systems which brings cognition and typology together, providing the essential parameters for the calibration of experiments for investigating cognition. To this end, we establish the extremes of nominal classification systems, from the surprisingly simple to the surprisingly complex. We analyse the two essential components of nominal classification systems: (i) assignment, i.e. the principles (semantic or formal) which govern category assignment and (ii) exponence, i.e. the morphological means by which systems of nominal classification are expressed. We discuss extreme configurations of assignment and exponence in individual languages and extreme multiple pairings of assignment and exponence in languages with two or even more concurrent classification systems.

中文翻译：

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极端分类

摘要分类在人类认知研究中仍然具有重要的意义。这是一个知识领域，所有致力于人类认知的学科（心理学，哲学，人类学和语言学）相交。在语言中，分类不仅是词汇结构的中心部分，而且在名词分类系统中也很重要，特别是性别和分类器。近年来，在名义分类系统的描述和分析方面取得了长足的进步，因此，我们现在可以对这种将认知和类型学结合在一起的系统进行介绍，为校准认知实验提供必要的参数。为此，我们建立了名义分类系统的极限，从令人惊讶的简单到令人惊讶的复杂。我们分析名义分类系统的两个基本组成部分：（i）分配，即控制类别分配的原则（语义或形式），以及（ii）指数，即表示名义分类系统的形态学手段。我们讨论了单个语言中分配和指数的极端配置，以及具有两个或更多并发分类系统的语言中分配和指数的极端多配对。