Grammatical gender: Difference between revisions

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

 

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}}

 

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}}

 

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.

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" and 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"/>

 

 

=== Related linguistic concepts ===

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.

 

Grammatical gender can be realized as inflection and can be conditioned by other types of inflection, especially number inflection, where the singular-plural contrast can interact with gender inflection.

 

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 (linguistics)|agreement]]).

 

Grammatical gender manifests itself when words related to a noun like [[determiner]]s, [[pronoun]]s or [[adjective]]s 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 [[grammatical number|number]] or [[grammatical case|case]]. In some languages the [[declension]] pattern followed by the noun itself will be different for different genders.

 

Additionally, in many languages, gender is often closely correlated with the basic unmodified form ([[lemma (morphology)|lemma]]) of the noun, and sometimes a noun can be modified to produce (for example) masculine and feminine words of similar meaning. See {{slink||Form-based morphological criteria}}, below.

 

[[Agreement (linguistics)|Agreement]], or concord, is a grammatical process in which certain words change their form so that values of certain [[grammatical category|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.{{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, [[verb]]s, [[adverbs]], [[complementizer]]s, and [[adposition]]s. 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.<ref name="dixon"/>{{sfn|Franceschina|2005|p=72}}{{sfn|Franceschina|2005|p=78}}

 

 

{| class="wikitable"

| {{interlinear|lang=es|'''la''' abuela|the.FEM.SG grandmother|"the grandmother"}}

|}

{| class="wikitable"

|+Example of grammatical gender in Spanish<ref>{{cite book|last=López-Arias |first=Julio |title=Test Yourself: Spanish Grammar |year=1996 |publisher=[[McGraw-Hill]] |isbn=0844223743 |edition=1 |page=85 |chapter=10}}</ref>

Other languages, {{abbr|e.g.|for example}} [[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, {{lang|sh|d(j)eca}} "children" is feminine ''[[singularia tantum]]'' and {{lang|sh|vrata}} "door" is neuter ''pluralia tantum''.

 

Pronouns may [[agreement (linguistics)|agree]] in gender with the noun or noun phrase to which they refer (their [[antecedent (grammar)|antecedent]]). Sometimes, however, there is no antecedent—the referent of the pronoun is deduced indirectly from the context: this is found with personal pronouns, as well as with indefinite and dummy pronouns.

 

In [[Polish language|Polish]], a few general words such as {{lang|pl|zwierzę}} ("animal") or {{lang|pl|bydlę}} ("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.

 

There are multiple theoretical approaches to the position and structure of gender in syntactic structures.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Kramer |first=R. |date=2016 |title=The location of gender features in the syntax |journal=[[Language and Linguistics Compass]] |volume=10 |number=11 |pages=661–677 |doi=10.1111/lnc3.12226}}</ref>

 

In many 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. In such languages there may be a correlation, to a greater or lesser degree, between gender and the form of a noun (such as the vowel or consonant or syllable with which it ends).

 

 

In other cases, meaning takes precedence: the noun {{lang|es|comunista}} "communist" is masculine when it refers or could refer to a man, even though it ends with {{lang|es|-a}}. 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: {{lang|es|problema}} ("problem") is masculine in Spanish because it was derived from a Greek noun of the neuter gender, whereas {{lang|es|foto}} ("photo") and {{lang|es|radio}} ("broadcast signal") are feminine because they are [[Clipping (morphology)|clippings]] of {{lang|es|fotografía}} and {{lang|es|radiodifusión}} respectively, both grammatically feminine nouns.

It is possible for a noun to have more than one gender.<ref name="hockett"/><ref name="dixon"/><ref name="sil"/> Such gender shifts are sometimes correlated with meaning shifts, and sometimes yield doublets with no difference in meaning. Moreover, gender shifts sometimes crosscuts number contrasts, such that the singular form of a noun has one gender, and plural form of the noun has a different gender.

 

Gender shift may be associated with a difference in the sex of the referent, as with nouns such as {{lang|es|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 {{lang|de|See}} meaning "lake" is masculine, whereas the identical word meaning "sea" is feminine. The meanings of the Norwegian noun {{lang|no|ting}} have diverged further: masculine {{lang|no|en ting}} is "a thing", whereas neuter {{lang|no|et ting}} is "an assembly". (The parliament is the {{lang|no|Storting}}, "the Great {{lang|no|Ting}}"; the other {{lang|no|ting}}s like {{lang|no|Borgarting}} are the regional courts.)

 

It is a matter of analysis how to draw the line between a single [[polysemy|polysemous]] word with multiple genders and a set of [[homonym]]s with one gender each. For example, Bulgarian has a pair of homonyms {{lang|bg|пръст}} ({{lang|bg|prəst}}) which are etymologically unrelated. One is masculine and means "finger"; the other is feminine and means "soil".

 

In other cases, a word may be usable in multiple genders indifferently. For example, in [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]] the word {{lang|bg|пу̀стош}}, ({{transliteration|bg|pustosh}}, "wilderness") may be either masculine (definite form {{lang|bg|пу̀стоша}}, {{transliteration|bg|pustoshə}}) or feminine (definite form {{lang|bg|пустошта̀}}, {{transliteration|bg|pustoshta}}) without any change in meaning and no preference in usage.

 

The word for "sun" can be another example. One might decline it masculine: {{lang|no|En sol, solen, soler, solene}}, or feminine: {{lang|no|Ei sol, sola, soler, solene}}, in [[Norwegian Bokmål]]. The same goes for a lot of common words like {{lang|no|bok}} (book), {{lang|no|dukke}} (doll), {{lang|no|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, the word for "girl" is declined: {{lang|no|En jente, jenta, jenter, jentene}}.

 

Sometimes a noun's gender can change between its plural and singular forms, as with the French words {{lang|fr|amour}} ("love"), {{lang|fr|délice}} ("delight") and {{lang|fr|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 ({{lang|fr|amour}} used to be feminine in the singular too) or result from slightly different notions ({{lang|fr|orgue}} in the singular is usually a [[barrel organ]], whereas the plural {{lang|fr|orgues}} usually refers to the collection of columns in a [[church organ]]){{disputed inline|reason="It's actually a remnant of the neutral declension in Latin"|date=December 2013}}. Further examples are the Italian words {{lang|it|uovo}} ("egg") and {{lang|it|braccio}} ("arm"). These are masculine in the singular, but form the irregular plurals {{lang|it|uova}} and {{lang|it|braccia}}, which have the endings of the feminine singular, but have feminine plural agreement. (This is related to the forms of the [[Latin declension|second declension]] Latin neuter nouns from which they derive: {{lang|la|ovum}} and {{lang|it|bracchium}}, with nominative plurals {{lang|la|ova}} and {{lang|la|bracchia}}.) In other cases, the anomaly can be explained by the form of the noun, as is the case in [[Scottish Gaelic]]. Masculine nouns which form their plural by [[Palatalization (phonetics)|palatalization]] of their final consonant can change gender in their plural form, as a palatalized final consonant is often a marker of a feminine noun, e.g. {{lang|gd|balach beag}} ("small boy"), but {{lang|gd|balaich bheaga}} ("small boys"), with the adjective showing agreement for both feminine gender ([[lenition]] of initial consonant) and plural number (suffixed {{lang|gd|-a}}).