= Grammatical gender =

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= Grammatical gender =
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Introduction
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In linguistics, grammatical gender is a specific form of noun class
system in which the division of noun classes forms an agreement system
with another aspect of the language, such as adjectives, articles,
pronouns, or verbs. This system is used in approximately one quarter
of the world's languages. In these languages, most or all nouns
inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called
'gender';There are different views whether or not pluralia tantum
always have a gender:
* Wilfried Kürschner ('Grammatisches Kompendium', 6. edition, 2008, p.
121) for example states that German pluralia tantum do not have a
gender.
* The Duden ('Duden Grammatik', 8. edition, p. 152f.) for example
states that all German pluralia tanta have a gender, but it can not be
determined. the values present in a given language (of which there are
usually two or three) are called the 'genders' of that language.
According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected
in the behaviour of associated words."

Common gender divisions include masculine and feminine; masculine,
feminine, and neuter; or animate and inanimate. In a few languages,
the gender assignment of nouns is solely determined by their meaning
or attributes, like biological sex, humanness, or animacy. However, in
most languages, this 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).
In this case, the gender assignment can also be influenced by the
morphology or phonology of the noun, or in some cases can be
apparently arbitrary.

Grammatical gender manifests itself when words related to a noun like
determiners, pronouns or adjectives change their form ('inflect')
according to the gender of noun they refer to ('agreement'). The parts
of speech affected by gender agreement, the circumstances in which it
occurs, and the way words are marked for gender vary between
languages. Gender inflection may interact with other grammatical
categories like number or case. In some languages the declension
pattern followed by the noun itself will be different for different
genders.

Grammatical gender is found in many Indo-European languages (including
Spanish, French, Russian, and German � but not Persian or English, for
example), Afroasiatic languages (which includes the Semitic and Berber
languages, etc.), and in other language families such as Dravidian and
Northeast Caucasian, as well as several Australian Aboriginal
languages such as Dyirbal, and Kalaw Lagaw Ya. Most Niger-Congo
languages also have extensive systems of noun classes, which can be
grouped into several grammatical genders. Conversely, grammatical
gender is usually absent from the Koreanic, Japonic, Tungusic, Turkic,
Mongolic, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Uralic and most Native American
language families. Modern English makes use of gender in pronouns,
which are generally marked for natural gender, but lacks a system of
gender concord within the noun phrase which is one of the central
elements of grammatical gender in most other Indo-European languages.

Overview
======================================================================
In languages with grammatical gender, each noun is assigned to one of
the classes called 'genders', which form a closed set. Most such
languages usually have from two to four different genders, but some
are attested with up to 20.

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, "humanness" or
non-humanness, and biological sex.

Few or no nouns can occur in more than one class. 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.

Gender is considered an inherent quality of nouns, and it affects the
forms of other related words, a process called �agreement�. Nouns may
be considered the �triggers� of the process, whereas other words will
be the �target� of these changes.

These related words can be, depending on the language: determiners,
pronouns, numerals, quantifiers, possessives, adjectives, past and
passive participles, articles, verbs, adverbs, complementizers, and
adpositions. 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.

Gender division systems
=========================
Common systems of gender division include:
* masculine-feminine: Here 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. Examples
of languages with such a system include most of the modern Romance
languages, the Baltic languages, the Celtic languages, Hindustani, and
the Afroasiatic languages.
* masculine-feminine-neuter: This is similar to the masculine-feminine
system, 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 'Mädchen',
meaning "girl", which is neuter. This is because it is actually a
diminutive of "Magd" and all diminutive forms with the suffix '-chen'
are neuter. Examples of languages with such a system include later
forms of Proto-Indo-European (see below), Sanskrit, Norwegian in most
dialects and in both written forms (Bokmål and Nynorsk), Marathi,
Greek, Latin, Romanian, German, standard Dutch and some dialects and
the Slavic languages.
* animate-inanimate: Here nouns that denote 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 (see below). Modern examples include, to some
extent, Basque, and Ojibwe.
*:In Northern Kurdish language (Kurmanji), the same word can have two
genders according to the context. For example, if the word 'dar'
(meaning wood or tree) is feminine, it means that it is a living tree
(e.g. 'dara sêvê' means "apple tree"), but if it is masculine, it
means that it is dead, no longer living (e.g. 'darê sêvê' means "apple
wood"). So if one wants to say a certain table is made of the wood
from an apple tree, he or she can not use the word 'dar' in a feminine
gender, and if he or she wants to refer to the apple tree in his or
her garden can not use 'dar' with masculine gender.
* common-neuter: Here a masculine-feminine-neuter system previously
existed, but the distinction between masculine and feminine genders
has been lost (they have merged into what is called 'common gender').
Thus nouns denoting people are usually of common gender, whereas other
nouns may be of either gender. Examples include Danish and Swedish
(see Gender in Danish and Swedish), and to some extent Dutch (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 common gender,
as the declensions follow a different pattern than both the Norwegian
written languages. Norwegian Nynorsk, Norwegian Bokmål and most spoken
dialects retain masculine, feminine and neuter even if their
Scandinavian neighbours 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
(see below).

Other types of division or subdivision may be found in particular
languages. These may sometimes be referred to as 'classes' rather than
genders; 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, also sometimes between nouns denoting
humans and non-humans. (For details, see below.) A human-non-human (or
"rational-non-rational") distinction is also found in Dravidian
languages. (See below.)

Consequences of gender
======================================================================
The grammatical gender of a noun manifests itself in two principal
ways: in the modifications that the noun itself undergoes, and in
modifications of other related words (agreement). These are described
in the following sections.

Noun inflection
=================
The gender of a noun may affect the modifications that the noun itself
undergoes, particularly the way in which the noun inflects for number
and case. For example, a language like Latin, German or Russian has a
number of different declension patterns, and which pattern a
particular noun follows may be highly correlated with its gender. For
some instances of this, see Latin declension. A concrete example is
provided by the German word 'See', which has two possible genders:
when it is masculine (meaning "lake") its genitive singular form is
'Sees', but when it is feminine (meaning "sea"), the genitive is
'See', because feminine nouns do not take the genitive '-s'.

Gender is sometimes reflected in other ways. In Welsh, gender marking
is mostly lost on nouns; however, Welsh has initial mutation, where
the first consonant of a word changes into another in certain
conditions. Gender is one of the factors that can cause one form of
mutation (soft mutation). For instance, the word 'merch' "girl"
changes into 'ferch' after the definite article. This only occurs with
feminine singular nouns: 'mab' "son" remains unchanged. Adjectives are
affected by gender in a similar way.

align=left Default After definite article With adjective
Masculine singular |'mab' "son" 'y mab' "the son" 'y mab
mawr' "the big son"
| 'merch' || "girl" || 'y **f**erch' || "the girl" || 'y **f**erch
**f**awr' ||"the big girl"
Feminine singular

Additionally, in many languages, gender is often closely correlated
with the basic unmodified form (lemma) of the noun, and sometimes a
noun can be modified to produce (for example) masculine and feminine
words of similar meaning. See , below.

Agreement
===========
Agreement, or concord, is a grammatical process in which certain words
change their form so that values of certain grammatical categories
match those of related words. Gender is one of the categories which
frequently require agreement. In this case, nouns may be considered
the �triggers� of the process, because they have an inherent gender,
whereas related words that change their form to match the gender of
the noun can be considered the �target� of these changes.

These related words can be, depending on the language: determiners,
pronouns, numerals, quantifiers, possessives, adjectives, past and
passive participles, verbs, adverbs, complementizers, and adpositions.
Gender class may be marked on the noun itself, but can also 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.

As an example, we consider Spanish, a language with two noun genders:
masculine and feminine. Among other lexical items, the definite
article changes its form according to the gender of the noun. In the
singular, the article is: 'el' (masculine), and 'la' (feminine). Thus,
nouns referring to male beings carry the masculine article, and female
beings the feminine article (agreement).

Example
Gender !! Phrase !! Gloss
| **'el** abuelo' || "the grandfather"
Masculine
| **'la** abuela' || "the grandmother"
Feminine
However, every noun must belong to one of the two categories�even
nouns referring to sexless entities must be either masculine or
feminine. Generally, a word that ends in "-a" is feminine and in "-o"
masculine. However, not all words end in "a" or "o".
Example
Gender !! Phrase !! Gloss
| **'el** plato' || "the dish"
Masculine
| **'la** guitarra' || "the guitar"
Feminine
|**'los**' platos
|Masculine |"the dishes"
|**'las**' guitarras
|Feminine |"the guitars"

Gender assignment
======================================================================
Light blue: no gender system.

Yellow: common/neuter.

Green: animate/inanimate (Basque).

Red: masculine/feminine.

Dark blue: masculine/feminine/neuter. Standard Dutch has a
three-gender structure, which fell in disuse in the North of the
Netherlands but remains very much alive in Flanders and the South of
the Netherlands.
There are three main ways by which natural languages categorize nouns
into genders: according to logical or symbolic similarities in their
meaning (semantic), by grouping them with other nouns that have
similar form (morphological), and through apparently arbitrary
convention (lexical, possibly rooted in the language's history). In
most languages that have grammatical gender, a combination of these
three types of criteria is found, although one type may be more
prevalent.

Strict semantic criteria
==========================
In some languages, the gender of a noun is directly determined by its
physical attributes (sex, animacy, etc.), and there are few or no
exceptions to this rule. There are relatively few such languages. The
Dravidian languages use this system as described below.

Another example is the Dizi language, which has two asymmetrical
genders. The feminine includes all living beings of female sex (e.g.
woman, girl, cow...), and diminutives; the masculine encompasses all
other nouns (e.g. man, boy, pot, broom...). In this language, feminine
nouns are always marked with '-e' or '-in'.

Another African language, Defaka, has three genders: one for all male
humans, one for all female humans, and a third for all the remaining
nouns. Gender is only marked in personal pronouns. Standard English
pronouns (see below) are very similar in this respect, although the
English gendered pronouns ('he', 'she') are used for domestic animals
if the sex of the animal is known, and sometimes for certain objects
such as ships, e.g. "What happened to the Titanic? She (or it) sank."

Mostly semantic criteria
==========================
In some other languages, the gender of nouns can again mostly be
determined by physical (semantic) attributes, although there remain
some nouns whose gender is not assigned in this way (Corbett calls
this "semantic residue"). The world view (e.g. mythology) of the
speakers may influence the division of categories.

An example is the Zande language, which has four genders: male human,
female human, animal, and inanimate. However, there are about 80 nouns
representing inanimate entities which are nonetheless animate in
gender: heavenly objects (moon, rainbow), metal objects (hammer,
ring), edible plants (sweet potato, pea), and non-metallic objects
(whistle, ball). Many have a round shape or can be explained by the
role they play in mythology.

The Ket language has three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter),
and most gender assignment is based on semantics, but there are many
inanimate nouns outside the neuter class. Masculine nouns include male
animates, most fish, trees, the moon, large wooden objects, most
living beings and some religious items. Feminine nouns include female
animates, three types of fish, some plants, the sun and other heavenly
objects, some body parts and skin diseases, the soul, and some
religious items. Words for part of a whole, as well as most other
nouns that do not fall into any of the aforementioned classes, are
neuter. The gender assignment of non-sex-differentiable things is
complex. In general, those of no importance to the Kets are feminine,
whereas objects of importance (e.g. fish, wood) are masculine.
Mythology is again a significant factor.

The Alamblak language has two genders, masculine and feminine.
However, the masculine also includes things which are tall or long and
slender, or narrow (e.g. fish, snakes, arrows and slender trees),
whereas the feminine gender has things which are short, squat or wide
(e.g. turtles, houses, shields and squat trees).

The distinction between the gender of a noun and the gender of the
object it refers to is clear when nouns of different genders can be
used for the same object, e.g. French vélo (m.) = bicyclette (f.).

Correlation between gender and the form of a noun
===================================================
In many other languages, nouns are assigned to gender largely without
any semantic basis - that is, not based on any feature (such as
animacy or sex) of the person or thing that a noun represents.
However, in many languages there may be a correlation, to a greater or
lesser degree, between gender and the form of a noun (such as the
letter or syllable with which it ends).

For example, in Portuguese and Spanish, nouns that end in '-o' or a
consonant are mostly masculine, whereas those that end in '-a' are
mostly feminine, regardless of their meaning. (Nouns that end in some
other vowel are assigned a gender either according to etymology, by
analogy, or by some other convention.) These rules may override
semantics in some cases: for example, the noun 'membro'/'miembro'
("member") is always masculine, even when it refers to a girl or a
woman, and 'pessoa'/'persona' ("person") is always feminine, even when
it refers to a boy or a man. (In other cases, though, meaning takes
precedence: the noun 'comunista' "communist" is masculine when it
refers or could refer to a man, even though it ends with '-a'.) In
fact, nouns in Spanish and Portuguese (as in the other Romance
languages such as Italian and French) generally follow the gender of
the Latin words from which they are derived. When nouns deviate from
the rules for gender, there is usually an etymological explanation:
'problema' ("problem") is masculine in Spanish because it was derived
from a Greek noun of the neuter gender, whereas 'foto' ("photo") and
'radio' ("broadcast signal") are feminine because they are clippings
of 'fotograf�a' and 'radiodifusión' respectively, both grammatically
feminine nouns. (Most Spanish nouns in '-ión' are feminine; they
derive from Latin feminines in '-�', accusative '-i�nem'.) But the
opposite is correct with Northern Kurdish language or Kurmanci. For
example, the words endam (member) and heval (friend) can be masculine
or feminine according to the person they refer to.
*Keça wî hevala min e. (His daughter is my friend)
*Kurrê wî hevalê min e. (His son is my friend)

Suffixes often carry a specific gender. For example, in German,
diminutives with the suffixes '-chen' and '-lein' (meaning "little,
young") are always neuter, even if they refer to people, as with
'Mädchen' ("girl") and 'Fräulein' ("young woman") (see below).
Similarly, the suffix '-ling', which makes countable nouns from
uncountable nouns ('Teig' "dough" � 'Teigling' "piece of dough"), or
personal nouns from abstract nouns ('Lehre' "teaching", 'Strafe'
"punishment" � 'Lehrling' "apprentice", 'Sträfling' "convict") or
adjectives ('feige' "cowardly" � 'Feigling' "coward"), always produces
masculine nouns. And the German suffixes '-heit' and '-keit'
(comparable with '-hood' and '-ness' in English) produce feminine
nouns.

In Irish, nouns ending in '-óir/-eoir' and '-�n' are always masculine,
whereas those ending '-óg/-eog' or '-lann' are always feminine.

In Arabic, nouns whose singular form ends in a 't�ʾ marbū�ah'
(traditionally a , becoming in pausa) are of feminine gender, the
only significant exceptions being the word ' ("caliph") and certain
masculine personal names (e.g. ʾUs�mah). However, many masculine
nouns take a 't�ʾ marbū�a' in their plural; for example ' ("male
professor") has the plural ', which might be confused for a feminine
singular noun. Gender may also be predictable from the type of
derivation: for instance, the verbal nouns of Stem II (e.g. ', from
') are always masculine.

In French, nouns ending in '-e' tend to be feminine, whereas others
tend to be masculine, but there are many exceptions to this (e.g.
'cadre', 'arbre', 'signe', 'meuble', 'nuage' are masculine as 'façon',
'chanson', 'voix', 'main', 'eau' are feminine), note the many
masculine nouns ending in '-e' preceded by double consonants. Certain
suffixes are quite reliable indicators, such as '-age', which when
added to a verb (e.g. 'garer' "to park" � 'garage'; nettoyer "to
clean" � 'nettoyage' "cleaning") indicates a masculine noun; however,
when -'age' is part of the root of the word, it can be feminine, as in
'plage' ("beach") or 'image'. On the other hand, nouns ending in
'-tion', '-sion' and '-aison' are all feminine.

Nouns can sometimes vary their form to enable the derivation of
differently gendered cognate nouns; for example, to produce nouns with
a similar meaning but referring to someone of a different sex. Thus,
in Spanish, 'niño' means "boy", and 'niña' means "girl". This paradigm
can be exploited for making new words: from the masculine nouns
'abogado' "lawyer", 'diputado' "member of parliament" and 'doctor'
"doctor", it was straightforward to make the feminine equivalents
'abogada', 'diputada', and 'doctora'.

In the same way, personal names are frequently constructed with
affixes that identify the sex of the bearer. Common feminine suffixes
used in English names are '-a', of Latin or Romance origin (cf.
'Robert' and 'Roberta'); and '-e', of French origin (cf. 'Justin' and
'Justine').

Although gender inflection may be used to construct nouns and names
for people of opposite sexes in languages that have grammatical
gender, this alone does not constitute grammatical gender. Distinct
words and names for men and women are also common in languages which
do not have a grammatical gender system for nouns in general. English,
for example, has feminine suffixes such as '-ess' (as in 'actress',
'waitress', etc.), and also distinguishes male and female personal
names, as in the above examples.

Gender in personal names
==========================
Given names are proper nouns and they follow the same gender
grammatical rules as common nouns. In most Indo-European languages
female grammatical gender is created using an �a� or an �e� ending.

Classical Latin typically made a grammatical feminine gender in �a�
(silva - forest, aqua - water) and this was reflected in feminine
names originating in that period, like Emilia. Romance languages
preserved this characteristic. For example, Spanish has approximately
89% feminine nouns with an �a� ending and 98% given names with the
same ending.

In the Germanic languages the female names have been Latinized by
adding �e� and �a�: Brunhild, Kriemhild and Hroswith became Brunhilde,
Kriemhilde and Hroswitha.
Slavic feminine given names: Olga (Russian), Ma�gorzata (Polish),
Tetiana (Ukrainian), Oksana (Belarusian), Eliška (Czech), Bronislava
(Slovak), Milica (Serbian), Darina (Bulgarian), Lucja (Croatian),
Lamija (Bosnian) and Zala (Slovenian).

Apparent absence of criteria
==============================
In some languages, any gender markers have been so eroded over time
(possibly through deflexion) that they are no longer recognizable.
Many German nouns, for example, do not indicate their gender through
either meaning or form. In such cases a noun's gender must simply be
memorized, and gender can be regarded as an integral part of each noun
when considered as an entry in the speaker's lexicon. (This is
reflected in dictionaries, which typically indicate the gender of noun
headwords where applicable.)

Second-language learners are often encouraged to memorize a modifier,
usually a definite article, in conjunction with each noun - for
example, a learner of French may learn the word for "chair" as 'la
chaise' (meaning "the chair"); this carries the information that the
noun is 'chaise', and that it is feminine (because 'la' is the
feminine singular form of the definite article).

When learning a second language such as Spanish speakers are
encouraged to memorize articles (either the "el" or the "la" in front
of the word. Generally they correspond with "-o" being masculine and
"-a" being feminine. However, there are exceptions to this rule such
as 'el panda' (the panda), 'el d�a' (the day), 'la mano' (the hand),
'el cura' (the priest), etc.

Nouns with more than one gender
======================================================================
It is relatively uncommon for a noun to have more than one possible
gender. When this happens, it may be associated with a difference in
the sex of the referent, as with nouns such as 'comunista' in Spanish,
which may be either masculine or feminine, depending on whether it
refers to a male or a female. It may also correspond to some other
difference in the meaning of the word. For example, the German word
'See' meaning "lake" is masculine, whereas the identical word meaning
"sea" is feminine. The meanings of the Norwegian noun 'ting' have
diverged further: masculine 'en ting' is "a thing", whereas neuter 'et
ting' is "an assembly". (The parliament is the Storting, "the Great
'Ting'"; the other 'ting's like Borgarting are the regional courts.)

It is a matter of analysis how to draw the line between a single
polysemous word with multiple genders and a set of homonyms with one
gender each. For example, Bulgarian has a pair of homonyms 'п��'
('pr�st') which are etymologically unrelated. One is masculine and
means "finger"; the other is feminine and means "soil".

Sometimes a noun's gender can change between plural and singular, as
with the French words 'amour' ("love"), 'délice' ("delight") and
'orgue' ("organ" as musical instrument), all of which are masculine in
the singular but feminine in the plural. These anomalies may have a
historical explanation ('amour' used to be feminine in the singular
too) or result from slightly different notions ('orgue' in the
singular is usually a barrel organ, whereas the plural 'orgues'
usually refers to the collection of columns in a church organ).
Further examples are the Italian words 'uovo' ("egg") and 'braccio'
("arm"). These are masculine in the singular, but form the irregular
plurals 'uova' and 'braccia', which have the endings of the feminine
singular, but have feminine plural agreement. (This is related to the
forms of the second declension Latin neuter nouns from which they
derive: 'ovum' and 'bracchium', with nominative plurals 'ova' and
'bracchia'.)

In other cases, a word may be usable in multiple genders
indifferently. For example, in Bulgarian the word 'п��о�',
('pustosh', "wilderness") may be either masculine (definite form
'п��о�а', 'pustosh�') or feminine (definite form 'п��о��а�',
'pustoshta') without any change in meaning and no preference in usage.
In Norwegian, many nouns can be either feminine or masculine according
to the dialect, level of formality or whim of the speaker/writer. Even
the two written forms of the language have many nouns whose gender is
optional. Choosing the masculine gender will often seem more formal
than using the feminine. This might be because before the creation of
Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål in the late 19th century,
Norwegians wrote in Danish, which has lost the feminine gender, thus
usage of the masculine gender (corresponding exactly to Danish common
gender in conjugation in Norwegian Bokmål) is more formal sounding to
modern Norwegians.

The word for "sun" can be another example. One might decline it
masculine: "En sol, solen, soler, solene", or feminine: "Ei sol, sola,
soler, solene", in Norwegian Bokmål. The same goes for a lot of common
words like "bok" (book), "dukke" (doll), "bøtte" (bucket) and so
forth. Many of the words where it is possible to choose gender are
inanimate objects that one might suspect would be conjugated with the
neuter gender. Nouns conjugated with the neuter gender cannot normally
be conjugated as feminine or masculine in Norwegian. There is also a
slight tendency towards using the masculine indefinite article even
when choosing the feminine conjugation of a noun in many eastern
Norwegian dialects. For instance, word for "girl" is declined: "En
jente, jenta, jenter, jentene".

Genderless nouns
======================================================================
In some languages the gender is distinguished only in singular number
but not in plural. In terms of linguistic markedness, these languages
neutralize the gender opposition in the plural, itself a marked
category. So adjectives and pronouns have three forms in singular
(e.g. Bulgarian '�е�вен', '�е�вена', '�е�вено' or German 'roter',
'rote', 'rotes') but only one in plural (Bulgarian '�е�вени', German
'rote') [all examples mean "red"]. As a consequence 'pluralia tantum'
nouns (lacking a singular form) cannot be assigned a gender. Example
with Bulgarian: 'кле�и' ('kleshti', "pincers"), 'га�и' ('gashti',
"pants"), 'о�ила' ('ochila', "spectacles"), '�
�иле' ('hrile',
"gills"). The characteristic ending '-а' of 'о�ила' suggests a neuter
noun, but there is no way to cross-check it and there are indeed a few
masculine nouns using the same ending in their plural ('к�ака' and
'�ога' are plurals of masculine 'к�ак' "leg" and '�ог' "horn").
However, the endings '-и' and '-е' do not make any such indications
because they are ambiguous themselves: although '-и' is the regular
ending for masculine and feminine nouns, both are in fact used to form
plurals of nouns of all three genders (e.g. 'заводи', 'жени',
'на�екоми' from masculine 'завод' "factory", feminine 'жена' "wo
man"
and neuter 'на�екомо' "insect" or 'к�але', '��е', 'колене' fr
om
masculine 'к�ал' "king", feminine '��ка' "hand" and neuter 'кол�но'
"knee").

Other languages, e.g. Serbo-Croatian, allow doubly marked forms both
for number and gender. In these languages, each noun has a definite
gender no matter the number. For example, 'djeca' "children" is
feminine 'singularia tantum' and 'vrata' "door" is neuter 'pluralia
tantum'.

Names, occupations, and nationalities
======================================================================
In some languages, some names have two forms, a male and a female one.
This can be true of occupations and nationalities. For example,
'Andrew' and 'Andrea' in English, or '��ν��αν�ίνο� (Konstantinos)' and
'��ν��αν�ίνα (Konstantina)' in Greek. Or 'actor' and 'actress' in
English, but 'doctor' for both, and 'ηθο�οι�� (ithopios)' �actor� for
both male and female in Greek and 'για�� (giatros)' �doctor� again
for both, but with informal female variants 'για��ίνα (giatrina)' and
'γιά��αινα (giatraina)' too. Finally, in the case of a nationality, in
Greek there are five forms: male and female for people (and sometimes
for other living beings), and masculine, feminine, and neuter for
nouns. For example, 'English = �γγλο� (Anglos), �γγλίδα (Anglida),
αγγλικ�� (anglikos), αγγλική (angliki), αγγλικ� (angliko)'. T
o
complicate matters, the Greek language often offers additional less
formal versions of these. The corresponding for English are the
following: '�γγλ�ζο� (Englezos), �γγλ�ζα (Engleza), εγγλ�ζικο�
(englezikos), εγγλ�ζικη (engleziki), εγγλ�ζικο (engleziko)'. The
formal forms come from the name '�γγλία (Anglia)' �England�, while the
less formal are derived from Italian 'inglese'.

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 "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a
language relate to sex, such as when an animate-inanimate distinction
is made. Note, however, that the word "gender" derives from Latin
'genus' (also the root of 'genre') which originally meant "kind", so
it does not necessarily have a sexual meaning.

Noun classifiers
==================
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 determiners 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 'classifier' people". A
more general type of classifier (classifier handshapes) can be found
in sign languages.

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 classifier 个 (�)'gè' is
frequently used as an alternative to various more specific
classifiers.

Gender of pronouns
======================================================================
As noted above, pronouns may agree in gender with the noun or noun
phrase to which they refer (their antecedent). Sometimes, however,
there is no antecedent - the referent of the pronoun is deduced
indirectly from the context. In such cases, the pronoun is likely to
agree with the 'natural gender' of the referent. Examples of this can
be in most European languages, including English (the personal
pronouns 'he', 'she' and 'it' are used depending on whether the
referent is male, female, or inanimate or non-human; this is in spite
of the fact that English does not generally have grammatical gender).
A parallel example is provided by the object suffixes of verbs in
Arabic, which correspond to object pronouns, and which also inflect
for gender in the second person (though not in the first):
* "I love you", said to a male: ' ()
* "I love you", said to a female: ' ()

Not all languages have gendered pronouns. In languages that never had
grammatical gender, there is normally just one word for "he" and
"she", like 'dia' in Indonesian, '�' in Hungarian and 'o' in Turkish.
These languages might only have different pronouns and inflections in
the third person to differentiate between people and inanimate
objects, but even this distinction is often absent. (In written
Finnish, for example, 'hän' is used for "he" and "she" and 'se' for
"it", but in the colloquial language 'se' is usually used for "he" and
"she" as well.)

For more on these different types of pronoun, see Gender-specific
pronoun and Gender-neutral pronoun. Issues may arise in languages with
gender-specific pronouns in cases when the gender of the referent is
unknown or not specified; this is discussed under Gender-neutral
language, and in relation to English at Singular 'they'.

In some cases the gender of a pronoun is not marked in the form of the
pronoun itself, but is marked on other words by way of agreement. Thus
the French word for "I" is 'je', regardless of who is speaking; but
this word becomes feminine or masculine depending on the sex of the
speaker, as may be reflected through adjective agreement: 'je suis
forte' ("I am strong", spoken by a female); 'je suis fort' (the same
spoken by a male).

In null-subject languages (and in some elliptical expressions in other
languages), such agreement may take place even though the pronoun does
not in fact appear. For example, in Portuguese:
* "[I am] very grateful", said by a male: 'muito obrigado'
* the same, said by a female: 'muito obrigada'
The two sentences above mean literally "much obliged"; the adjective
agrees with the natural gender of the speaker, that is, with the
gender of the first person pronoun which does not appear explicitly
here.

{{anchor|Indefinite pronouns|Dummy pronouns}}Indefinite and dummy pronouns
============================================================================
A dummy pronoun is a type of pronoun used when a particular verb
argument (such as the subject) is nonexistent, but when a reference to
the argument is nevertheless syntactically required. They occur mostly
in non-pro-drop languages, such as English (because in pro-drop
languages the position of the argument can be left empty). Examples in
English are the uses of 'it' in "It's raining" and "It's nice to
relax."

When a language has gendered pronouns, the use of a particular word as
a dummy pronoun may involve the selection of a particular gender, even
though there is no noun to agree with. In languages with a neuter
gender, a neuter pronoun is usually used, as in German 'es regnet'
("it rains, it's raining"), where 'es' is the neuter third person
singular pronoun. (English behaves similarly, because the word 'it'
comes from the Old English neuter gender.) In languages with only
masculine and feminine genders, the dummy pronoun may be the masculine
third person singular, as in the French for "it's raining": 'il pleut'
(where 'il' means "he", or "it" when referring to masculine nouns);
although some languages use the feminine, as in the equivalent Welsh
sentence: 'mae hi'n bwrw glaw' (where the dummy pronoun is 'hi', which
means "she", or "it" when referring to feminine nouns).

A similar, apparently arbitrary gender assignment may need to be made
in the case of indefinite pronouns, where the referent is generally
unknown. In this case the question is usually not which pronoun to
use, but which gender to assign a given pronoun to (for such purposes
as adjective agreement). For example, the French pronouns 'quelqu'un'
("someone"), 'personne' ("no-one") and 'quelque chose' ("something")
are all treated as masculine - this is in spite of the fact that the
last two correspond to feminine nouns ('personne' meaning "person",
and 'chose' meaning "thing").

For other situations in which such a "default" gender assignment may
be required, see below.

==Grammatical vs. natural gender ==
The 'natural gender' of a noun, pronoun or noun phrase is a gender to
which it would be expected to belong based on relevant attributes of
its referent. This usually means masculine or feminine, depending on
the referent's sex (or gender in the sociological sense). For example,
in Spanish, 'mujer' ("woman") is feminine whereas 'hombre' ("man") is
masculine; these attributions occur solely due to the semantically
inherent gender character of each noun.

The 'grammatical gender' of a noun does not always coincide with its
natural gender. An example of this is the German word 'Mädchen'
("girl"); this is derived from 'Magd' "maiden", umlauted to "Mäd-"
with the diminutive suffix '-chen', and this suffix always makes the
noun grammatically neuter. Hence the grammatical gender of 'Mädchen'
is neuter, although its natural gender is feminine (because it refers
to a female person).

Other examples include:
* Old English 'wīf' (neuter) and 'wīfmann' (masculine), meaning
"woman"
* German 'Weib' (neuter), meaning "woman" (the word is now pejorative
and generally replaced with 'die Frau', originally 'lady', fem. of
obsolete 'der Fro', meaning 'lord')
* Irish 'cail�n' (masculine) meaning "girl", and 'stail' (feminine)
meaning "stallion"
* Scottish Gaelic 'boireannach' (masculine), meaning "woman"
* Slovenian 'dekle' (neuter), meaning "girl"
* Portuguese 'mulherão' (masculine), meaning "voluptuous woman"

Normally, such exceptions are a small minority.

When a noun with conflicting natural and grammatical gender is the
antecedent of a pronoun, it may not be clear which gender of pronoun
to choose. There is a certain tendency to keep the grammatical gender
when a close back-reference is made, but to switch to natural gender
when the reference is further away. For example, in German, the
sentences "The girl has come home from school. She is now doing her
homework" can be translated in two ways:
* 'Das Mädchen (n.) ist aus der Schule gekommen. Es (n.) macht jetzt
seine (n.) Hausaufgaben.'
* 'Das Mädchen (n.) ist aus der Schule gekommen. Sie (f.) macht jetzt
ihre (f.) Hausaufgaben.'
Though the second sentence may appear grammatically incorrect
(constructio ad sensum), it is common in speech. With one or more
intervening sentences, the second form becomes even more likely.
However, a switch to the natural gender is never possible with
articles and 'attributive' pronouns or adjectives. Thus it can never
be correct to say '*eine Mädchen' ("a girl" - with female indefinite
article) or '*diese kleine Mädchen' ("this little girl" - with female
demonstrative pronoun and adjective).

This phenomenon is quite popular in Slavic languages: for example
Polish 'kreatura' (deprecative "creature") is feminine but can be used
to refer both man (masculine gender), woman (feminine gender), child
(neuter gender) or even animate nouns (e.g. a dog being masculine).
Similarly with other deprecatory nouns as 'pierdo�a', 'ciapa',
'�amaga', '�ajza', 'niezdara' ("wuss, klutz"); 'niemowa' ("mute") can
used deprecatively as described previously, and then can be used for
verbs marked for the male and female genders.

Animals
=========
In the case of languages which have masculine and feminine genders,
the relation between biological sex and grammatical gender tends to be
less exact in the case of animals than in the case of people. In
Spanish, for instance, a cheetah is always 'un guepardo' (masculine)
and a zebra is always 'una cebra' (feminine), regardless of their
biological sex. To specify the sex of an animal, an adjective may be
added, as in 'un guepardo hembra' ("a female cheetah"), or 'una cebra
macho' ("a male zebra"). Different names for the male and the female
of a species are more frequent for common pets or farm animals, e.g.
English 'cow' and 'bull', Spanish 'vaca' "cow" and 'toro' "bull".

As regards the pronouns used to refer to animals, these generally
agree in gender with the nouns denoting those animals, rather than the
animals' sex (natural gender). In a language like English, which does
not assign grammatical gender to nouns, the pronoun used for referring
to objects ('it') is often used for animals also. However, if the sex
of the animal is known, and particularly in the case of companion
animals, the gendered pronouns ('he' and 'she') may be used as they
would be for a human.

In Polish, a few general words such as 'zwierz�' ("animal") or 'bydl�'
("animal, one head of cattle") are neuter, but most species names are
masculine or feminine. When the sex of an animal is known, it will
normally be referred to using gendered pronouns consistent with its
sex; otherwise the pronouns will correspond to the gender of the noun
denoting its species.

Mixed and indeterminate gender
======================================================================
There are certain situations where the assignment of gender to a noun,
pronoun or noun phrase may not be straightforward. This includes in
particular:
* groups of mixed gender;
* references to people or things of unknown or unspecified gender.

In languages with masculine and feminine gender, the masculine is
usually employed by default to refer to persons of unknown gender, and
to groups of people of mixed gender. Thus, in French the feminine
plural pronoun 'elles' always designates an all-female group of people
(or stands for a group of nouns all of feminine gender), but the
masculine equivalent 'ils' may refer to a group of males or masculine
nouns, to a mixed group, or to a group of people of unknown genders.
In such cases, one says that the feminine gender is semantically
marked, whereas the masculine gender is unmarked.

In English, the problem of gender determination does not arise in the
plural, because gender in that language is reflected only in pronouns,
and the plural pronoun 'they' does not have gendered forms. In the
singular, however, the issue frequently arises when a person of
unspecified or unknown gender is being referred to. In this case it
has been traditional to use the masculine ('he'), but other solutions
are now often preferred - see Gender-neutral language and Singular
'they'.

In languages with a neuter gender, such as Slavic and Germanic
languages, the neuter is often used for indeterminate gender
reference, particularly when the things referred to are not people. In
some cases this may even apply when referring to people, particularly
children. For example, in English, one may use 'it' to refer to a
child, particularly when speaking generically rather than about a
particular child of known sex.

In Icelandic (which preserves a masculine-feminine-neuter distinction
in both singular and plural), the neuter is used for indeterminate or
mixed gender reference even when talking about people. For example,
the greeting 'velkominn' ("welcome") is altered depending on who is
being spoken to:
* 'velkominn' (masculine singular) - to one male person
* 'velkomin' (feminine singular) - to one female person
* 'velkomið' (neuter singular) - to someone whose gender is unknown
* 'velkomnir' (masculine plural) - to a group of males
* 'velkomnar' (feminine plural) - to a group of females
* 'velkomin' (neuter plural) - to a mixed or indeterminate group
Nevertheless, even in Icelandic, the feminine is considered somewhat
more marked than the masculine.

In Swedish (which has an overall common-neuter gender system),
masculinity may be argued to be a marked feature, because in the weak
adjectival declension there is a distinct ending ('-e') for naturally
masculine nouns (as in 'min lillebror', "my little brother"). In spite
of this, the third-person singular masculine pronoun 'han' would
normally be the default for a person of unknown gender, although in
practice the indefinite pronoun 'man' and the reflexive 'sig' or its
possessive forms 'sin/sitt/sina' usually make this unnecessary.

In Polish, where a gender-like distinction is made in the plural
between "masculine personal" and all other cases (see below), a group
is treated as masculine personal if it contains at least one male
person.

In languages which preserve a three-way gender division in the plural,
the rules for determining the gender (and sometimes number) of a
coordinated noun phrase ("... and ...") may be quite complex. Czech is
an example of such a language, with a division (in the plural) between
masculine animate, masculine inanimate, feminine, and neuter. The
rules for gender and number of coordinated phrases in that language
are summarized at .

Gender correspondence between languages
======================================================================
Nouns which have the same meanings in different languages need not
have the same gender. This is particularly so in the case of things
with no natural gender, such as sexless objects. For example, there
is, by all appearances, nothing about a table that should cause it to
be associated with any particular gender, and different languages'
words for "table" are found to have various genders: feminine, as with
the French 'table'; masculine, as with German 'Tisch'; or neuter, as
with Norwegian 'bord'. (Even within a given language, nouns that
denote the same concept may differ in gender - for example, of two
German words for "car", 'Wagen' is masculine whereas 'Auto' is
neuter.)

Cognate nouns in closely related languages are likely to have the same
gender, because they tend to inherit the gender of the original word
in the parent language. For instance, in the Romance languages, the
words for "sun" are masculine, being derived from the Latin masculine
noun 'sol', whereas the words for "moon" are feminine, being derived
from the Latin feminine 'luna'. (This contrasts with the genders found
in German, where 'Sonne' "sun" is feminine, and 'Mond' "moon" is
masculine.) However, there are exceptions to this principle. For
instance, 'arte' ("art") is feminine in Italian, like the Latin word
'ars' from which it stems, but in French, the corresponding word 'art'
is masculine. Likewise, the word for "boat" is neuter in German ('das
Boot'), but common gender in Swedish ('en båt').

Some more examples of the above phenomena are given below. (These come
mostly from the Slavic languages, where gender largely correlates with
the noun ending.)
* The Russian word л�на ("moon") is feminine, whereas ме�� ("crescent
moon", also meaning "month") is masculine. In Polish, another Slavic
language, the word for moon is 'ksi�życ', which is masculine.
* Russian also has two words for "potato": ка��о�ел� which is
masculine, and ка��о�ка which is feminine.
* In Polish the loanword 'tramwaj' ("tram") is masculine, whereas the
cognate loanword in Czech, 'tramvaj', is feminine. In Romanian,
'tramvai' is neuter.
* The Polish word 'tysi�
c' ("thousand") is masculine, whereas the
cognate in Russian, ��а, is feminine, while the Icelandic cognate
'þúsund' is neuter.
* The Spanish word 'origen' ("origin") is masculine, but its close
relatives 'origem' (from Portuguese) and 'orixe' (from Galician and
Asturian) are feminine.
* The French word 'équipe' ("team") is feminine, while the Spanish
word 'equipo' is masculine. The Spanish form contrasts with Brazilian
Portuguese 'equipe' and European Portuguese 'equipa', both of which
are feminine.
* The Italian word 'scimmia' ("ape") is feminine, whereas the Spanish
word 'simio' is masculine.
* The French word 'mer' is feminine, whereas the Spanish cognate 'mar'
is generally masculine, except in some poetic contexts. Both mean
"sea," and descended from the Latin 'mare' which was neuter.

Gender in words borrowed from one language by another
=======================================================
Ibrahim identifies several processes by which a language assigns a
gender to a newly borrowed word; these processes follow patterns by
which even children, through their subconscious recognition of
patterns, can often correctly predict a noun's gender.
# If the noun is animate, natural gender tends to dictate grammatical
gender.
# The borrowed word tends to take the gender of the native word it
replaces.
# If the borrowed word happens to have a suffix that the borrowing
language uses as a gender marker, the suffix tends to dictate gender.
# If the borrowed word rhymes with one or more native words, the
latter tend to dictate gender.
# The default assignment is the borrowing language's unmarked gender.
# Rarely, the word retains the gender it had in the donor language.
This tends to happen more frequently in more formal language such as
scientific terms, where some knowledge of the donor language can be
expected.

Sometimes the gender of a word switches with time. For example, the
Russian modern loanword 'ви�ки' ('viski') "whisky" was originally
feminine, then masculine, and today it has become neuter.

Useful roles
======================================================================
Ibrahim identified three possible useful roles of grammatical gender:
# In a language with explicit inflections for gender, it is easy to
express the natural gender of animate beings.
# Grammatical gender "can be a valuable tool of disambiguation",
rendering clarity about antecedents.
# In literature, gender can be used to "animate and personify
inanimate nouns".

Among these, role 2 is probably the most important in everyday usage.
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, gender
distinction prevents such ambiguity. The word for "(flower) bed"
('Beet') is neuter, whereas that for "garden" ('Garten') is masculine.
Hence, if a neuter relative pronoun is used, the relative clause
refers to "bed", 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. (There
are often several synonymous nouns of different grammatical gender to
pick from to avoid this, however.)

Moreover, grammatical gender may serve to distinguish homophones. It
is a quite common phenomenon in language development for two phonemes
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 'pot' ("pot")
and 'peau' ("skin") are homophones /po/, but disagree in gender: 'le
pot' vs. 'la peau'.

Influence on thought
======================================================================
Although the idea that language can constrain or significantly impact
thought has been largely disregarded by modern linguistics, a number
of minor cognitive effects of features including grammatical gender
have been consistently demonstrated. 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.

Caveats of this research include the possibility of subjects "using
grammatical gender as a strategy for performing the task", 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" and male
gender to objects "used by men, artificial, angular, or heavy."
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.

Another kind of test 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 (, 'f.') more often used the words
'beautiful', 'elegant', 'pretty', and 'slender', while Spanish
speakers, whose word for bridge is masculine (), used 'big',
'dangerous', 'strong', and 'sturdy' more often. However, studies of
this kind have been criticised on various grounds and yield an unclear
pattern of results overall.

By language
======================================================================
Grammatical gender is a common phenomenon in the world's languages. A
typological survey of 174 languages revealed that over one fourth of
them had grammatical gender. Gender systems rarely overlap with
numerical classifier systems. Gender and noun class systems are
usually found in fusional or agglutinating languages, whereas
classifiers are more typical of isolating languages. Thus, according
to Johanna Nichols, these characteristics correlate positively with
the presence of grammatical gender in the world's languages:
* location in an area with languages featuring noun classes;
* preference for head-marking morphology;
* moderate to high morphological complexity;
* non-accusative alignment.

Indo-European
===============
Many Indo-European languages, but not English, provide archetypical
examples of grammatical gender.

Research indicates that the earliest stages of Proto-Indo-European had
two genders (animate and inanimate), as did Hittite, the earliest
attested Indo-European language. The classification of nouns based on
animacy and inanimacy and the lack of gender are today characteristic
of Armenian. According to the theory, the animate gender, which
(unlike the inanimate) had independent vocative and accusative forms,
later split into masculine and feminine, thus originating the
three-way classification into masculine, feminine and neuter.

Many Indo-European languages retained the three genders, including
most Slavic languages, Latin, Sanskrit, Ancient and Modern Greek, and
German. In them, there is a high but not absolute correlation between
grammatical gender and declensional class. Many linguists believe that
to be true of the middle and late stages of Proto-Indo-European.

However, many languages reduced the number of genders to two. Some
lost the neuter, leaving masculine and feminine like most Romance
languages (see . A few traces of the neuter remain, such as the
distinct Spanish pronoun 'ello' and Italian nouns with so-called
"mobile gender"), as well as Hindustani and the Celtic languages.
Others merged feminine and masculine into a common gender but retained
the neuter, as in Swedish and Danish (and, to some extent, Dutch; see
Gender in Danish and Swedish and Gender in Dutch grammar). Finally,
some languages, such as English and Afrikaans, have nearly completely
lost grammatical gender (retaining only some traces, such as the
English pronouns 'he', 'she', 'they', and 'it' � Afrikaans 'hy', 'sy',
'hulle', and 'dit'); Bengali, Persian, Assamese, Ossetic, Odia,
Khowar, and Kalasha have lost it entirely.

On the other hand, some Slavic languages can be argued to have added
new genders to the classical three (see below).

English
=========
Although grammatical gender was a fully productive inflectional
category in Old English, Modern English has a much less pervasive
gender system, primarily based on natural gender and reflected
essentially in pronouns only.

There are a few traces of gender marking in Modern English:
* Some words take different derived forms depending on the natural
gender of the referent, such as 'actor/actress' and 'widow/widower'.
* The third-person singular personal pronouns (and their possessive
forms) are gender specific: 'he/him/his' (masculine gender, used for
men, boys, and male animals), 'she/her(s)' (feminine gender, for
women, girls, and female animals), the singular 'they/them/their(s)'
(neuter gender, used for people or animals of unknown, irrelevant, or
non-binary gender), and 'it/its' (neuter gender, mainly for objects,
abstractions and animals). (There are also distinct personal and
non-personal forms but no differentiation by natural gender in the
case of certain interrogative and relative pronouns: 'who/whom' for
persons, corresponding to 'he', 'she', and the singular 'they'; and
'which' corresponding to 'it'.)

However, these are relatively insignificant features compared with a
typical language with full grammatical gender. English nouns are not
generally considered to belong to gender classes in the way that
French, German or Russian nouns are. There is no gender agreement in
English between nouns and their modifiers (articles, other
determiners, or adjectives, with the occasional exception such as
'blond/blonde', a spelling convention borrowed from French). Gender
agreement applies in effect only to pronouns, and the choice of
pronoun is determined based on semantics (perceived qualities of the
thing being referred to) rather than on any conventional assignment of
particular nouns to particular genders.

Only a relatively small number of English nouns have distinct male and
female forms; many of them are loanwords from non-Germanic languages
(the suffixes '-ress' and '-rix' in words such as 'actress' and
'aviatrix', for instance, derive from Latin '-rix', in the first case
via the French '-rice'). English has no live productive gender
markers. An example of such a marker might be the suffix '-ette' (of
French provenance), but this is seldom used today, surviving mostly in
either historical contexts or with disparaging or humorous intent.

The gender of an English pronoun typically coincides with the natural
gender of its referent, rather than with the grammatical gender of its
antecedent. The choice between 'she', 'he', 'they', and 'it' comes
down to whether the pronoun is intended to designate a woman, a man,
or someone or something else. There are certain exceptions, however:
* With animals, 'it' is usually used, but when the sex of the animal
is known, it may be referred to as 'he' or 'she' (particularly when
expressing an emotional connection with the animal, as with a pet).
See also above.
* Certain nonhuman things are referred to with the pronoun 'she'
('her', 'hers'), particularly countries and ships, and sometimes other
vehicles or machines. See . That usage is considered an optional
figure of speech; it is also in decline, and advised against by most
journalistic style guides.

Problems arise when selecting a personal pronoun to refer to someone
of unspecified or unknown gender (see also above). In the past and to
some degree still in the present, the masculine has been used as the
"default" gender in English. The use of the plural pronoun 'they' with
singular reference is common in practice. The neuter 'it' may be used
for a baby but not normally for an older child or adult. (Other
genderless pronouns exist, such as the impersonal pronoun 'one', but
they are not generally substitutable for a personal pronoun.) For more
information see Gender-neutral language and Singular 'they'.

Slavic languages
==================
The Slavic languages mostly continue the Proto-Indo-European system of
three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter. Gender correlates
largely with noun endings (masculine nouns typically end in a
consonant, feminines in '-a' and neuters in '-o' or '-e') but there
are many exceptions, particularly in the case of nouns whose stems end
in a soft consonant. However, some of the languages, including
Russian, Czech, Slovak and Polish, also make certain additional
grammatical distinctions between animate and inanimate nouns: Polish
in the plural, and Russian in the accusative case, differentiate
between human and non-human nouns.

In Russian, the different treatment of animate nouns involves their
accusative case (and that of adjectives qualifying them) being formed
identically to the genitive rather than to the nominative. In the
singular that applies to masculine nouns only, but in the plural it
applies in all genders. See Russian declension.

A similar system applies in Czech, but the situation is somewhat
different in the plural: Only masculine nouns are affected, and the
distinctive feature is a distinct inflective ending for masculine
animate nouns in the nominative plural and for adjectives and verbs
agreeing with those nouns. See Czech declension.

Polish might be said to distinguish five genders: personal masculine
(referring to male humans), animate non-personal masculine, inanimate
masculine, feminine, and neuter. The animate-inanimate opposition for
the masculine gender applies in the singular, and the
personal-impersonal opposition, which classes animals along with
inanimate objects, applies in the plural. (A few nouns denoting
inanimate things are treated grammatically as animate and vice versa.)
The manifestations of the differences are as follows:
* In the singular, masculine animates (in the standard declension)
have an accusative form identical to the genitive, and masculine
inanimates have accusative identical to the nominative. The same
applies to adjectives qualifying these nouns, the same as in Russian
and Czech. Also, Polish masculine animates always form their genitive
in '-a', whereas in the case of inanimates some use '-a' and some
'-u':
::animate: 'dobry klient' ("good customer"; nominative); 'dobrego
klienta' (accusative and genitive)
::animate: 'dobry pies' ("good dog"; nominative); 'dobrego psa'
(accusative and genitive)
::inanimate: 'dobry ser' ("good cheese"; nominative and accusative);
'dobrego sera' (genitive only)
* In the plural, masculine personal nouns (but not other animate
nouns) take accusatives that are identical to the genitives; they also
typically take different endings in the nominative (e.g. '-i' rather
than '-y'). Such endings also appear on adjectives and past tense
verbs. The two features are analogous to features of Russian and Czech
respectively, except that those languages make an animate/inanimate
distinction rather than personal/impersonal) . Examples of the Polish
system:
::personal: 'dobrzy klienci' ("good customers"; nominative); 'dobrych
klientów' (accusative and genitive)
::impersonal: 'dobre psy' ("good dogs"; nominative and accusative);
'dobrych psów' (genitive only)
::impersonal: 'dobre sery' ("good cheeses"; nominative and
accusative); 'dobrych serów' (genitive only)

A few nouns have both personal and impersonal forms, depending on
meaning (for example, 'klient' may behave as an impersonal noun when
it refers to a client in the computing sense). For more information on
the above inflection patterns, see Polish morphology. For certain
rules concerning the treatment of mixed-gender groups, see above.

Dravidian
===========
In the Dravidian languages, nouns are classified primarily on the
basis of their semantic properties. The highest-level classification
of nouns is often described as being between "rational" and
"nonrational". Nouns representing humans and deities are considered
rational, and other nouns (those representing animals and objects) are
treated as nonrational. Within the rational class there are further
subdivisions into masculine, feminine and collective nouns. For
further information, see Tamil grammar.

Other
=======
* In the Austronesian Wuvulu-Aua language, vocative words used when
addressing a relative often specify the speaker's gender. For example,
'tafi' means 'sister of female', '�ari' means opposite-gender sibling,
and 'wane' means female's father's sister or female's brother's
daughter.

Constructed languages
=======================
Many constructed languages have natural gender systems similar to that
of English. Animate nouns can have distinct forms reflecting natural
gender, and personal pronouns are selected according to natural
gender. Some constructed languages have no gender agreement on
modifiers.

See also Gender-neutrality in languages with grammatical gender:
International auxiliary languages and Gender-specific pronoun:
Constructed languages.

Auxiliary languages
=====================
* Esperanto has no grammatical gender. The female suffix '-in-',
sometimes quoted as an example, is simply one of many suffixes
intended to simplify the vocabulary and make the language easier and
faster to learn. There are no accompanying features of grammatical
gender (such as different articles or markers applying to associated
adjectives). Although it differentiates a small number of male and
female nouns, such as 'patro' (father) and 'patrino' (mother) for the
reason described above, most nouns are gender-neutral and the use of
it is not necessary. For instance, 'hundo' means either a male or
female dog, 'virhundo' means a male dog, and 'hundino' means a female
dog. Personal pronouns 'li' (he) and '�i' (she) and their possessive
forms 'lia' (his) and '�ia' (her) are used for male and female
antecedents, and '�i' (it) and its possessive form '�ia' (its) are
used to refer to a nonpersonal antecedent.
* Ido has the masculine infix '-ul' and the feminine infix '-in' for
animate beings. Both are optional and used only if it is necessary to
avoid ambiguity: 'kato' "a cat", 'katulo' "a male cat", 'katino' "a
female cat". There are third-person singular and plural pronouns for
all three genders, 'masculine', 'feminine', and 'neuter', but also
'gender-free' pronouns.
* Interlingua has no grammatical gender. It indicates only the natural
gender, as in 'matre' "mother" and 'patre' "father". Interlingua
speakers may use feminine endings. For example, '-a' may be used in
place of '-o' in 'catto', producing 'catta' "female cat". 'Professora'
may be used to denote a professor who is female, and 'actrice' may be
used to mean "actress". As in Ido, inflections marking gender are
optional, but some gender-specific nouns such as 'femina', "woman",
happen to end in '-a' or '-o'. Interlingua has feminine pronouns, and
its general pronoun forms are also used as masculine pronouns.

Artistic languages
====================
* The Klingon language by Marc Okrand divides nouns into 'beings
capable of using language', 'body parts' and others. Regular nouns in
these categories form plurals with the endings '-pu, '-Du and '-mey'
respectively. The first category also has a separate possessive suffix
in the first and second persons.
* High Valyrian, built by David J. Peterson for the TV series 'Game of
Thrones', has four grammatical genders, none of which are related to
natural gender (see also Valyrian languages#Nouns).
* Quenya and Sindarin, created by J. R. R. Tolkien, do not have
grammatical gender. However, both languages do have some nouns marked
for natural gender; for example, Quenya 'seldo' 'child (m.)', 'selde'
'child (f.)', 'selda' 'child (n.)'. Modifiers in Quenya agree with
their head noun in number only.

See also
======================================================================
* Gender-neutral language
* Gender neutrality in genderless languages
* Gender neutrality in languages with grammatical gender
* Gender-neutral language in English
* Gender-specific job title
* Generic antecedents
* Grammatical conjugation

Bibliography
======================================================================
*
* Craig, Colette G. (1986). 'Noun classes and categorization:
Proceedings of a symposium on categorization and noun classification,
Eugene, Oregon, October 1983'. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins.
*
* Corbett, Greville (1994) "Gender and gender systems". In R. Asher
(ed.) 'The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics', Oxford: Pergamon
Press, pp. 1347-1353.
*
* Greenberg, J. H. (1978) "How does a language acquire gender
markers?" In J. H. Greenberg et al. (eds.) 'Universals of Human
Language', Vol. 4, pp. 47-82.
* Hockett, Charles F. (1958) 'A Course in Modern Linguistics',
Macmillan.
*
* Iturrioz, J. L. (1986) "Structure, meaning and function: a
functional analysis of gender and other classificatory techniques".
'Función' 1. 1-3.
* Mercier, Adele (2002) "L'homme et la factrice: sur la logique du
genre en français". "Dialogue", Volume 41, Issue 3, 2002
* Pinker, Steven (1994) 'The Language Instinct', William Morrow and
Company.

External links
======================================================================
* [https://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/eduweb/engl401/grammar/index.htm An
overview of the grammar of Old English]
*
*
[https://web.archive.org/web/20080414093055/http://ling.upenn.edu/~urih/numerals
pdf
"The morphology of gender in Hebrew and Arabic numerals", by Uri
Horesh] (PDF)
* [http://www.smg.surrey.ac.uk/features/morphosyntactic/gender doi:
Grammatical Features Inventory]
*
[http://blog-en.namepedia.org/2015/12/the-exceptions-male-names-ending-in-a/
NamepediA Blog - The Exceptions: European Male Names Ending in A]

License
=========
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender