Difference between revisions of "Gender (definition)"

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Grammatical gender, in the linguistics sense, refers to classes of particular nouns based on their inflectional endings and over all word structure. This is not be confused with the sex related gender, often referred to as 'biological gender,' which is used in cases where the grammatical gender agrees with the biological sex of the concept to which a noun refers. This means that words such as 'woman' would have feminine gender and 'man' would have masculine gender due to the fact that they are biologically defined as something feminine or masculine. Many languages that use cases also exhibit grammatical gender, as is the case with German, Russian and French, as well as Scottish Gaelic.
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''for information about Gender in Scottish Gaelic see [[Gender]]''
  
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==Examples in other languages==
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'''Grammatical gender''' refers to classes of particular nouns based on their inflectional endings and overall word structure. It is also sometimes known as '''noun class'''.  Grammatical Gender is not be confused with the biological sex of an object or person or psychological gender of a person. While many biologically male objects might hold masculine grammatical gender in a language, they need not be masculine. Grammatical Gender is typically arbitrary. Languages can have any number of grammatical genders. Many Indo-European Languages have three (masculine, feminine and neuter), but others -- like Scottish Gaelic -- have only two: masculine and feminine. Indigenous languages of Africa, North America, and Australia often have many more genders than 3.
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===Russian===
 
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In languages like Russian, gender is rather predictable and is based upon the ending of the word (in most cases). Russian has 3 genders - masculine, feminine and neuter:
 
  
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{| class="wikitable" border="2"
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==See Also==
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|-
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*[[Feminine (definition)]]
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! Masculine/Мужской род
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*[[Masculine (definition)]]
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! Feminine/Женский род
 
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! Neuter/Средний род
 
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|-
 
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|align="left"| ends in a consonant
 
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|align="left"| ends in an 'а' or 'я'
 
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|align="left"| ends in an 'о' or 'е'
 
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|-
 
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|align="left"| ex: стол (table), город (city)
 
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|align="left"| ex: книга (book), Россия (Russia)
 
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|align="left"| ex: окно (window), приглашение (invitation)
 
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|}
 
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===German===
 
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In languages like German, gender is less consistent; however it often times can be determined by derivational endings:
 
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'''die Madel''' - the maiden (biological determined).
 
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'''das Mäd[[chen]]''' - the girl (-chen always assigns neuter gender to a word, regardless of biological gender).
 
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'''das Leben''' - life
 
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'''die Lebenig[[keit]]''' - vitality (keit/heit indicates 'the state of being X' and always assigns feminine gender).
 
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'''entschulden''' - to apologize/to pardon
 
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'''die Entschuldig[[ung]]''' - apology (-ung assigns feminine gender and nominalizes verbs).
 
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[[''HOWEVER'']]
 
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''der Sprung'' - spring, bounce (-ung in this case does not assign gender because it is NOT derivational; Sprung is a word in its own right and is not derived from a verb).
 
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'''der Berg''' - mountain
 
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'''das [[Ge]]birge''' - mountain range (Ge- indicates collectives and is often times accompanied by a vowel mutation. It assigns neuter gender).
 
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==Examples in Scottish Gaelic==
 
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In Scottish-Gaelic, nouns belong principally to two grammatical genders: masculine and feminine. This affects the lenition of initial consonants for adjectives as well as the initial consonants of verb initial nouns when the definite article is used.
 
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====See Also====
 
  
 
==External Links==
 
==External Links==
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*Matthews, P. H. (1997) ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics.''  Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 
*Matthews, P. H. (1997) ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics.''  Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 
*Crystal, David (1999) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Language.'' London: Penguin.
 
*Crystal, David (1999) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Language.'' London: Penguin.
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[[Category:Technical Definitions]]
 
[[Category:Technical Definitions]]
 
[[Category:Morphology]]
 
[[Category:Morphology]]

Latest revision as of 21:27, 7 June 2012

for information about Gender in Scottish Gaelic see Gender

Grammatical gender refers to classes of particular nouns based on their inflectional endings and overall word structure. It is also sometimes known as noun class. Grammatical Gender is not be confused with the biological sex of an object or person or psychological gender of a person. While many biologically male objects might hold masculine grammatical gender in a language, they need not be masculine. Grammatical Gender is typically arbitrary. Languages can have any number of grammatical genders. Many Indo-European Languages have three (masculine, feminine and neuter), but others -- like Scottish Gaelic -- have only two: masculine and feminine. Indigenous languages of Africa, North America, and Australia often have many more genders than 3.

See Also

External Links

Note: Wikipedia can be edited by anyone and often pages are vandalized or uninformed, So be careful with any links posted below!

References

  • Matthews, P. H. (1997) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Crystal, David (1999) The Penguin Dictionary of Language. London: Penguin.
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