What is grammatical gender?

Definition
Grammatical gender is a noun class system, composed of two or three classes, whose nouns that
have human male and female referents tend to be in separate classes. Other nouns that are
classified in the same way in the language may not be classed by any correlation with natural sex
distinctions.

Kinds
Here are some kinds of grammatical gender:
What is feminine gender?
Definition
Feminine gender is a grammatical gender that

marks nouns that have human or animal female referents, and

often marks nouns that have referents that do not carry distinctions of sex.

Examples (Spanish)
la mujer ‘the woman’
la gallina ‘the hen’
la mesa ‘the table’
What is masculine gender?
Definition
Masculine gender is a grammatical gender that

marks nouns having human or animal male referents, and

often marks nouns having referents that do not have distinctions of sex.

Examples (Spanish)
el hombre ‘the man’
el gallino ‘the rooster’
el libro ‘the book’
What is neuter gender?

Definition
Neuter gender is a grammatical gender that

includes those nouns having referents which do not have distinctions of sex, and
often includes some which do have a natural sex distinction.

Examples (German)
Here are some examples of words that have neuter gender [diacritical markings are not
reproduced here]:

das Festmahl ‘the banquet’

das Madchen ‘the girl’

1
Generic
Grammatical gender is a kind of
What is a noun class?
Definition
A noun class system is a grammatical system that some languages use to overtly categorize
nouns. Noun classes are

often based, at least in part, on characteristics (such as gender, animacy, shape) of the referents
of some of the nouns in each class, and
distinguished by

an affix on the noun or by a clitic or word in the noun phrase, and

agreement affixes on noun phrase constituents and on the verb.

Discussion
A finer distinction may be made, according to R. M. W. Dixon, between prototypical noun
classes (a grammatical system) and noun classifiers (a lexical set).

Noun class systems have the following characteristics:

They typically comprise a closed set of two to twenty classes, into which all nouns in the
language are divided.
Typically, few or no nouns can occur in more than one class.
Expression of the noun class is obligatory in all contexts.
Class may be marked on the noun itself, but will also always be marked on other constituents in
the noun phrase or in the sentence that show concord (agreement) with the noun.

Examples: Most types of gender systems and concord systems; many IndoEuropean languages,
Bantu languages, Niger Congo languages, Dyirbal (Australian)

Conversely, languages with noun classifier sets have the following characteristics:

They typically involve 20 or more classifiers (separate lexemes that co-occur with the noun).
One hundred classifiers are common, and 400 are attested. Not every noun must take a classifier.
Many nouns can occur with more than one classifier.
The classifier occurs in only some syntactic environments. In addition, use of the classifier may
be influenced by the pragmatics of style and the choice of written or spoken mode. (Often, the
more formal the style, the richer the variety of classifiers used, and the higher the frequency of
their use.)
Noun classifiers are always free lexical items that occur in the same noun phrase as the noun they
qualify. They never form a morphological unit with the noun, and there is never agreement
marking on the verb.

Note: Noun classifiers are usually derived from words used as names of concrete, discrete,
moveable objects.

2
 Examples: Japanese, Chinese, Southeast Asian languages, Austronesian languages, Mayan
languages, American Sign Language

Not all noun classifying languages fit neatly into one of these two prototypes of linguistic
categorization. Various intermediate types are attested in languages of the Americas (see Craig
1986 4–5 ; Payne, D. 1986 113, 129, 130 ).

Examples (Spanish)
In Spanish, nouns are classified by gender. In the following words, the suffixes -a ‘FEMININE’
and -o ‘MASCULINE’ express the noun class on the noun, and the articles la ‘FEMININE’ and el
‘MASCULINE’ agree with the nouns accordingly:

la hija ‘the daughter’

el hijo ‘the son’
la mesa ‘the table’
el mercado ‘the market’
Sources
Hartmann and Stork 1972 93

Foley, W. and Van Valin 1984 325

Mish 1991 510

Crystal 1985 133

Dixon 1968 105

Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik 1985 314

Context for this page:

Concept module: gender
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): G
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan
Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate
(editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics
This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL
International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004