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]]''
  
==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.
 
 
There are two genders in Scottish Gaelic: Masculine and Feminine. The gender of a noun affects a number of grammatical properties.
 
*The form of the [[articles|article]]: an clach 'the stone' (m) vs a' chaora 'the sheep' (f)
 
*The form of adjectives: an clach mòr 'the book stone' vs a chaora mhòr
 
*The pronoun used to refer to the noun (there is no pronoun equivalent to "it" in Scottish Gaelic.) Masculine nouns are referred to with e; feminine nouns are referred to with i.  
 
  
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==See Also==
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*[[Feminine (definition)]]
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*[[Masculine (definition)]]
  
 
==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 22:27, 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.