Editing Noun class (section)

{{Short description|Linguistic category of nouns}}
{{Grammatical categories}}
In [[linguistics]], a '''noun class''' is a particular [[grammatical category|category]] of [[noun]]s. A noun may belong to a given class because of the characteristic features of its [[referent]], such as gender, animacy, shape, but such designations are often clearly conventional. Some authors use the term "[[grammatical gender]]" as a synonym of "noun class", but others consider these different concepts. Noun classes should not be confused with [[noun classifier]]s.