Semantic and morphosyntactic differences among nouns: a template-based and modular cognitive model

All languages have a noun category that is realised diversely. Depending on languages, this dissimilarity characterised at the semantic or/and morphosyntactic level may be more or less important. In this paper, we would like to discuss those differences. The Riffian language will serve us as a reference in our enquiries, before referring to other languages to show how our discoveries could be applied to them. By putting in perspective those aspects, this leads us to propose a formal mathematical model denoted as a template-based and modular cognitive model. The aims of this article are thus manifold and cover theoretical issues. We demonstrate that nouns are organised and distributed in modular cognitive sets having their own morphological template and unmarked forms. The extent of these sets and their number as well as the template are specific to each language. All sorts of markers can compose with the template, but some, namely countability markers, are prevalent among several languages with no relationship. This approach allows us to explain the marking discrepancies existing between different kinds of nouns (borrowed, proper, countable and uncountable nouns) for a given linguistic variety or between languages. The main assumption of this model is that these irregular markings are caused by a template shift occurring when items undergo a process of word and meaning's formation.