Editing Grammatical gender (section)

== Overview ==
Languages with grammatical gender usually have two to four different genders, but some are attested with up to 20.<ref name="hockett" /><ref name="dixon">{{cite book |last=Dixon |first=Robert |title=Noun Classes |publisher=Lingua |date=1968 |pages=105–111}}</ref><ref name="sil">{{cite web |url= http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsGrammaticalGender.htm |work=SIL |title=Glossary of Linguistic Terms: What is grammatical gender?}}</ref>

[[#Gender contrasts|Common gender divisions]] include masculine and feminine; masculine, feminine, and neuter; or [[animacy|animate]] and inanimate.

[[File:Gato vs gata, illustration of grammatical gender in Spanish.svg|thumb|right|upright=1.15|The grammatical gender of a noun affects the form of other words related to it. For example, in [[Spanish language|Spanish]], [[determiner]]s, adjectives, and [[pronoun]]s change their form depending on the noun to which they refer.{{sfn|Bradley|2004|p=27, 52}} Spanish nouns have two genders: masculine and feminine, represented here by the nouns {{lang|es|gato}} and {{lang|es|gata}}, respectively.]]

Depending on the language and the word, this assignment might bear some relationship with the meaning of the noun (e.g. "woman" is usually feminine), or may be arbitrary.{{sfn|Franceschina|2005|p=72}}{{sfn|Franceschina|2005|p=78}}

In a few languages, the assignment of any particular noun (i.e., nominal lexeme, that set of noun forms inflectable from a common lemma) to one grammatical gender is solely determined by that noun's meaning, or attributes, like biological sex, humanness, or animacy.<ref>{{cite book |first=Juha |last=Janhunen |chapter=Grammatical gender from east to west |title=Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs: Gender in Grammar and Cognition |volume=124 |editor1-last=Unterbeck |editor1-first=Barbara |editor2-last=Rissanen |editor2-first=Matti |publisher=[[Mouton de Gruyter]] |date=1999 |page=689 |doi=10.1515/9783110802603.689 |isbn=9783110802603}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Male Animate Gender in Polish- definition (Męskożywotny – definicja, synonimy, przykłady użycia) |url= http://sjp.pwn.pl/slowniki/m%2525C4%252599sko%2525C5%2525BCywotny.html |access-date=24 January 2016 |work=sjp.pwn.pl}}</ref> However, the existence of words that denote male and female, such as the difference between "aunt" and "uncle" is not enough to constitute a gender system.<ref name="wals.info" />

In other languages, the division into genders usually correlates to some degree, at least for a certain set of nouns, such as those denoting humans, with some property or properties of the things that particular nouns denote. Such properties include [[animacy]] or inanimacy, "[[human]]ness" or non-humanness, and biological [[sex]].

However, in most languages, this [[Semantics (natural language)|semantic]] division is only partially valid, and many nouns may belong to a gender category that contrasts with their meaning, e.g. the word for "manliness" could be of feminine gender, as it is in French with "la masculinité" and "la virilité".{{NoteTag|The word for "manliness" has feminine grammatical gender in Spanish ({{lang|es|hombría, virilidad, masculinidad}}), French ({{lang|fr|masculinité, virilité}}), Latin ({{lang|la|virtūs}}), German ({{lang|de|Männlichkeit, Virilität}}), Polish ({{lang|pl|męskość}}), Russian ({{lang|ru|мужественность}}, {{transliteration|ru|muzhestvennost{{'}}}}) and Hindi ({{lang|hi|मर्दानगी}}, {{transliteration|hi|mardânegi}}), among others.}} In such a case, the gender assignment can also be influenced by the [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]] or [[phonology]] of the noun, or in some cases can be apparently arbitrary.

Usually each noun is assigned to one of the genders, and few or no nouns can occur in more than one gender.<ref name="hockett" /><ref name="dixon" /><ref name="sil" />

Gender is considered an inherent quality of nouns, and it affects the forms of other related words, a process called [[agreement (linguistics)|"agreement"]]. Nouns may be considered the "triggers" of the process, whereas other words will be the "target" of these changes.{{sfn|Franceschina|2005|p=72}}

These related words can be, depending on the language: [[determiner]]s, [[pronoun]]s, [[numeral (linguistics)|numeral]]s, [[Quantifier (linguistics)|quantifier]]s, [[possessive]]s, [[adjective]]s, past and passive [[participle]]s, [[article (grammar)|article]]s, [[verb]]s, [[adverbs]], [[complementizer]]s, and [[adposition]]s. Gender class may be marked on the noun itself, but will also always be marked on other constituents in a noun phrase or sentence. If the noun is explicitly marked, both trigger and target may feature similar alternations.<ref name="dixon" />{{sfn|Franceschina|2005|p=72}}{{sfn|Franceschina|2005|p=78}}

=== Functions ===
Three possible functions of grammatical gender include:{{sfn|Ibrahim|1973|pp=27–28}}
# In a language with explicit inflections for gender, it is easy to express gender distinctions in animate beings.
# Grammatical gender "can be a valuable tool of disambiguation", rendering clarity about antecedents or [[homophone]]s.
# In literature, gender can be used to "animate and personify inanimate nouns". Languages with gender distinction generally have fewer cases of ambiguity concerning, for example, pronominal reference. In the English phrase "''a flowerbed in the garden which I maintain''", only context tells us whether the relative clause (''which I maintain'') refers to the whole garden or just the flowerbed. In German, in cases where the objects in question have different grammatical gender, gender distinction prevents such ambiguity. The word for "flowerbed" ({{wikt-lang|de|Blumenbeet}}) is neuter, whereas that for "garden" ({{wikt-lang|de|Garten}}) is masculine. Hence, if a neuter relative pronoun is used, the relative clause refers to "flowerbed", and if a masculine pronoun is used, the relative clause refers to "garden". Because of this, languages with gender distinction can often use pronouns where in English a noun would have to be repeated in order to avoid confusion. It does not, however, help in cases where the words are of the same grammatical gender.

Moreover, grammatical gender may serve to distinguish homophones. It is a quite common phenomenon in language development for two [[phoneme]]s to merge, thereby making etymologically distinct words sound alike. In languages with gender distinction, however, these word pairs may still be distinguishable by their gender. For example, French {{wikt-lang|fr|pot}} ("pot") and {{wikt-lang|fr|peau}} ("skin") are homophones {{IPA|/po/}}, but disagree in gender: {{lang|fr|le pot}} vs. {{lang|fr|la peau}}.

=== Gender contrasts ===
{{See also|List of languages by type of grammatical genders}}
Common systems of gender contrast include:<ref>{{Cite web |title=What Are the 4 Genders? 7 Other Types, Gender Identity & 7 Sexuality Types |url= https://www.medicinenet.com/what_are_the_4_genders/article.htm |access-date=26 March 2024 |work=MedicineNet |language=en}}</ref>
* masculine–feminine gender contrast
* masculine–feminine–neuter gender contrast
* animate–inanimate gender contrast
* common–neuter gender contrast

==== Masculine–feminine contrast ====
Nouns that denote specifically male persons (or animals) are normally of masculine gender; those that denote specifically female persons (or animals) are normally of feminine gender; and nouns that denote something that does not have any sex, or do not specify the sex of their referent, have come to belong to one or other of the genders, in a way that may appear arbitrary.{{sfn|Franceschina|2005|p=72}}{{sfn|Franceschina|2005|p=78}} Examples of languages with such a system include most of the modern [[Romance languages]], the [[Baltic languages]], the [[Celtic languages]], some [[Indo-Aryan languages]] (e.g., [[Hindustani language|Hindustani]]), and the [[Afroasiatic languages]].

==== Masculine–feminine–neuter{{anchor|Masculine–feminine–neuter}} contrast ====
This is similar to systems with a masculine–feminine contrast, except that there is a third available gender, so nouns with sexless or unspecified-sex referents may be either masculine, feminine, or neuter. There are also certain exceptional nouns whose gender does not follow the denoted sex, such as the German {{lang|de|Mädchen}}, meaning "girl", which is neuter. This is because it is actually a diminutive of "Magd" and all diminutive forms with the suffix {{lang|de|-chen}} are neuter. Examples of languages with such a system include later forms of [[Proto-Indo-European language|Proto-Indo-European]] {{crossreference|(see [[#Indo-European|below]])|printworthy=y}}, [[Sanskrit]], some [[Germanic languages]], most [[Slavic languages]], a few [[Romance languages]] ([[Romanian language|Romanian]], [[Asturian language|Asturian]] and [[Neapolitan language|Neapolitan]]), [[Marathi language|Marathi]], [[Latin]], and [[Modern Greek grammar|Greek]].

==== Animate–inanimate contrast ====
Here nouns that denote [[animate gender|animate]] things (humans and animals) generally belong to one gender, and those that denote inanimate things to another (although there may be some deviation from that principle). Examples include earlier forms of Proto-Indo-European and the earliest family known to have split off from it, the extinct [[Anatolian languages]] {{crossreference|(see [[#Indo-European|below]])|printworthy=y}}. Modern examples include [[Algonquian languages]] such as [[Ojibwe language|Ojibwe]].{{sfn|Corbett|1991|pp=20–21}}
* In Northern [[Kurdish language]] ([[Kurmanji]]), the same word can have two genders according to the context. For example, if the word {{lang|ku|dar}} (meaning 'wood' or 'tree') is feminine, it means that it is a living tree (e.g., {{lang|ku|dara sêvê}} means 'apple tree'), but if it is masculine, it means that it is dead, no longer living (e.g., {{lang|ku|darê sêvê}} means 'apple wood'). So if one wants to refer to a certain table that is made of wood from an apple tree, one cannot use the word {{lang|ku|dar}} with a feminine gender, and if one wants to refer to an apple tree in a garden, one cannot use {{lang|ku|dar}} with a masculine gender.

==== Common–neuter contrast ====
Here a masculine–feminine–neuter system previously existed, but the distinction between masculine and feminine genders has been lost in nouns (they have merged into what is called ''common gender''), though not in pronouns that can operate under natural gender. Thus nouns denoting people are usually of common gender, whereas other nouns may be of either gender. Examples include [[Danish language|Danish]] and [[Swedish language|Swedish]]{{crossreference|&nbsp;(see [[Gender in Danish and Swedish]])}}, and to some extent Dutch{{crossreference|&nbsp;(see [[Gender in Dutch grammar]])}}.

The dialect of the old Norwegian capital [[Bergen]] also uses common gender and neuter exclusively. The common gender in Bergen and in Danish is inflected with the same articles and suffixes as the masculine gender in [[Norwegian Bokmål]]. This makes some obviously feminine noun phrases like "a cute girl", "the well milking cow" or "the pregnant mares" sound strange to most Norwegian ears when spoken by Danes and people from Bergen since they are inflected in a way that sounds like the masculine declensions in South-Eastern Norwegian dialects.

The same does not apply to [[Swedish language|Swedish]] common gender, as the declensions follow a different pattern from both the Norwegian written languages. [[Norwegian Nynorsk]], [[Norwegian Bokmål]] and most spoken dialects retain masculine, feminine and neuter even if their Scandinavian neighbors have lost one of the genders. As shown, the merger of masculine and feminine in these languages and dialects can be considered a reversal of the original split in Proto-Indo-European {{crossreference|(see [[#Indo-European|below]])|printworthy=y}}.

==== Other types of division or subdivision of gender ====
Some gender contrasts are referred to as ''classes''{{crossreference|&nbsp;(for some examples, see [[Noun class]])}}. In some of the [[Slavic languages]], for example, within the masculine and sometimes feminine and neuter genders, there is a further division between animate and inanimate nouns—and in [[Polish grammar|Polish]], also sometimes between nouns denoting humans and non-humans {{crossreference|(for details, see [[#Slavic languages|below]])|printworthy=y}}. A human–non-human (or "rational–non-rational") distinction is also found in [[Dravidian languages]] {{crossreference|(see [[#Dravidian|below]])|printworthy=y}}.

=== How gender contrasts can influence cognition ===
{{See also|Linguistic relativity}}
It has been shown that grammatical gender causes a number of cognitive effects.<ref name="McWhorter2014">{{cite book |first=John H. |last=McWhorter |title=The Language Hoax |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=dpnlAgAAQBAJ&q=ideas%20about%20gender |date=1 April 2014 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=978-0-19-936160-1}}</ref> For example, when native speakers of gendered languages are asked to imagine an inanimate object speaking, whether its voice is male or female tends to correspond to the grammatical gender of the object in their language. This has been observed for speakers of Spanish, French, and German, among others.<ref name="Pavlidou">{{cite journal |last1=Pavlidou |first1=Theodossia-Soula |last2=Alvanoudi |first2=Angeliki |title=Grammatical Gender and Cognition |work=[[James Cook University]] |date=2013 |url= https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/31865/1/31865_Alvanoudi_Pavlidou_2013.pdf |access-date=20 December 2018}}</ref><ref name="ChiuHong2013">{{cite book |first1=Chi-Yue |last1=Chiu |first2=Ying-yi |last2=Hong |title=Social Psychology of Culture |url= https://books.google.com/books?id=8xVdAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA120 |date=16 December 2013 |publisher=[[Psychology Press]] |isbn=978-1-317-71018-9 |page=120}}</ref>

Caveats of this research include the possibility of subjects "using grammatical gender as a strategy for performing the task",<ref>Boroditsky et al. (2003), cited in Pavlidou & Alvanoudi (2013).</ref> and the fact that even for inanimate objects the gender of nouns is not always random. For example, in Spanish, female gender is often attributed to objects that are "used by women, natural, round, or light", but male gender to objects "used by men, artificial, angular, or heavy".<ref name="ChiuHong2013" /> Apparent failures to reproduce the effect for German speakers has also led to a proposal that the effect is restricted to languages with a two-gender system, possibly because such languages are inclined towards a greater correspondence between grammatical and natural gender.<ref>Sera et al. (2002) and Vigliocco et al. (2005), cited in Pavlidou & Alvanoudi (2013).</ref><ref name="ChiuHong2013" />

Another kind of test, the [[semantic differential]], asks people to describe a noun, and attempts to measure whether it takes on gender-specific connotations depending on the speaker's native language. For example, one study found that German speakers describing a bridge ({{langx|de|Brücke}}, {{abbr|f.|feminine}}) more often used the words 'beautiful', 'elegant', 'pretty', and 'slender', while Spanish speakers, whose word for 'bridge' is masculine ({{lang|es|puente}}, {{abbr|m.|masculine}}), used 'big', 'dangerous', 'strong', and 'sturdy' more often.<ref name="Edge">{{cite web |last=Boroditsky |first=Lera |author-link=Lera Boroditsky |title=How does our language shape the way we think? |url= https://www.edge.org/conversation/how-does-our-language-shape-the-way-we-think |access-date=20 December 2018 |work=[[Edge.org#Edge.org|Edge.org]] |date=11 June 2009}}</ref> However, studies of this kind have been criticized on various grounds and yield an unclear pattern of results overall.<ref name="Pavlidou" />

=== Related linguistic concepts ===
==== Noun classes ====
{{Main|Noun classes}}
A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its [[referent]], such as sex, animacy, shape, although in some instances a noun can be placed in a particular class based purely on its grammatical behavior. Some authors use the term ''grammatical gender'' as a synonym of ''noun class'', but others use different definitions for each.

Many authors prefer the term ''noun class'' when none of the inflections in a language relate to sex, such as when an [[Animacy|animate]]–inanimate distinction is made. However, the word ''gender'' derives from Latin {{lang|la|[[genus]]}} (also the root of ''genre'') which originally meant 'kind, type', so it does not necessarily have a sexual meaning.

==== Noun classifiers ====
{{Main|Noun classifier}}
A classifier, or [[measure word]], is a [[word]] or [[morpheme]] used in some languages together with a noun, principally to enable numbers and certain other [[determiner]]s to be applied to the noun. They are not regularly used in English or other European languages, although they parallel the use of words such as ''piece(s)'' and ''head'' in phrases like "three pieces of paper" or "thirty head of cattle". They are a prominent feature of [[East Asian languages]], where it is common for all nouns to require a classifier when being quantified—for example, the equivalent of "three people" is often "three {{var|classifier}} people". A more general type of classifier ([[classifier handshape]]s) can be found in [[sign language]]s.

Classifiers can be considered similar to genders or noun classes, in that a language which uses classifiers normally has a number of different ones, used with different sets of nouns. These sets depend largely on properties of the things that the nouns denote (for example, a particular classifier may be used for long thin objects, another for flat objects, another for people, another for abstracts, etc.), although sometimes a noun is associated with a particular classifier more by convention than for any obvious reason. However it is also possible for a given noun to be usable with any of several classifiers; for example, the [[Mandarin Chinese|Mandarin]] [[Chinese classifier]] {{lang|cmn|个}} ({{lang|cmn|個}}) {{transliteration|cmn|gè}} is frequently used as an alternative to various more specific classifiers.