Gender

In a variety of different contexts, gender refers to the masculinity or femininity of words, persons, organisms, or characteristics. The classification into masculine and feminine is analogous to the biological sex of the referent, often by physical or syntactical analogy, linguistic decay, misunderstandings, societal norms, or personal choice. The nature of this categorisation varies depending on the context. For example, gender can be used to refer to the differences in biological sex between two members of a species, or different characteristics of electrical connectors. On the other side, in feminist theory, gender is used to refer solely to socially constructed differences between male and female behaviour, and the gender of a noun in many languages may have nothing to do with the concept described by it.

Grammatical gender

Main article: grammatical gender

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In linguistics, grammatical gender refers to a classification of nouns into classes, including masculine and feminine. The rules of grammar of many languages requires this classification to be reflected in the behaviour of associated words. Curzan illustrates this with a ?highly contrived? example in Old English:

Related Topics:
Grammatical gender - Grammar

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

: Seo brade line wæs tilu and ic hire lufod.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

: (Literal translation:) That broad shield was good and I her loved.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The noun lind (shield) is grammatically feminine, and forces the pronoun seo (the, that) and the adjectives brade (broad) and tilu (good) to appear in their feminine forms. Notably for Modern English speakers, the pronoun hire, referring back to lind, is feminine, adopting the grammatical gender of the referent. By comparison, Modern English uses natural gender, where the noun's class agrees with the sex (or sexlessness) of the referent:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

: That broad shield was good and I loved it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Here, the shield is understood as a sexless object, and is referred to by the neuter pronoun, it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Gender in Indo-European languages

There are many indications that the Proto-Indo-European language in an early stage of its existence had no signs of gender at all. The terminations of the names of father and mother, peter and mater, for example, are exactly the same. The idea of gender was first suggested by the difference between man and woman, male and female, and, as in so many languages at the present day, was represented not by any outward sign but by the meaning of the words themselves. When once arrived at, the conception of gender was extended to other objects besides those to which it properly belonged. The primitive Indo-European did not distinguish between subject and object, but personified objects by ascribing to them the motives and powers of living beings. Accordingly they were referred to by different pronouns, one class denoting the masculine and another class the feminine, and the distinction that existed between these two classes of pronouns was after a time transferred to the nouns. As soon as the preponderant number of stems in o in daily use had come to be regarded as masculine on account of their meaning, other stems in o, whatever might be their signification, were made to follow the general analogy and were similarly classed as masculines. In the same way, the suffix i or ya acquired a feminine sense, and was set apart to represent the feminine gender. Unlike the Semitic languages, the Indo-Europeans were not satisfied with these two genders, masculine and feminine. As soon as object and subject, patient and agent, were clearly distinguished from each other, there arose a need for a third gender, which should be neither masculine nor feminine, but denote things without life. This third gender was fittingly expressed either by the objective case used as a nominative (e.g. regnum), or by a stem without any case ending at all (e.g. virus),

Related Topics:
Proto-Indo-European language - Semitic languages

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In modern Indo-European languages, genders typically include feminine, masculine and neuter. Latin has these three, but in many of its modern descendants, such as French and Spanish, the neuter gender has all but disappeared. For objects with sex, the grammatical gender almost always agrees with the sex, but there are exceptions. there are elaborate (and mostly incomplete) rules to define the gender of a word. For example, in German, all nouns ending in -ung (corresponding to -ing in English) are feminine, and car brand names are masculine. Words with the diminutive ending -lein or -chen are always neuter, thus the grammatical genders of Mädchen (girl) and Fräulein (young woman) are neuter. In some local dialects of German, all nouns for female persons have been shifted to the neuter gender, but the female gender remains for some words denoting objects.

Related Topics:
Latin - French - Spanish - German

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

English generally exhibits gender only in third-person singular pronouns (he, she, and it), with the masculine and feminine genders used only for persons or higher animals, and some sometimes objects in colloquial speech as in 'Isn't she a beauty?'.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Gender in other language families

In many languages, such as Eskimo and Choctaw, its place is taken by a division of objects into animate and inanimate, while in other languages they are separated into rational and irrational. These classifications are sometimes called noun classes instead of genders.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~