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]]''
  
==Examples in Scottish Gaelic==
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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.
  
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==
 
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*[[Feminine (definition)]]
 
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*[[Masculine (definition)]]
====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.
 
  
 
[[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

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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.