Talk:Grammatical gender

What functional use is grammatical gender?

Could someone knowledgeable please add a section discussing what functional use grammatical gender has in a language? I'm not at all knowledgeable about it and came here looking for answers. I am a native English speaker who studied German for many years and though I learned gender for German I never really had any understanding of how it added value to the language.

Vttale (talk) 23:13, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

It doesnt. Its like the e in blue.--Metallurgist (talk) 20:29, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

With respect, the "e" in blue changes the sound of the "u" from short to long, roughly "blugh" to "bloo". Grammatical gender helps (but is not the only way) to indicate which noun a particular adjective or pronoun refers to. Consider: "the ship hit the bridge head on; whilst she sank it was merely bent". Clearly this is of less importance in Modern English which relies on word order, but is of great significance in languages such as Latin where word order is more fluid. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 06:52, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

English has four genders!

Unless I was taught wrong in high school (which, being tought by a professor of the language, I doubt) English does not have three genders. It has 4:

1. Masculine, for words that assign the masculine sex of PEOPLE-- "boy," "man," "actor," etc. are masculine. The appropriate pronouns for this gender are "he," "him," and "his."

2. Feminine, for words that assign the feminine sex of PEOPLE-- "girl," "woman," "actress," etc. are feminine. The appropriate pronouns for this gender are "she," "her," and "hers."

3. Common, for words that are assigned to PEOPLE from which gender cannot be determined through context. "student," "teacher," etc. The appropriate pronouns for this gender are "he," "him," and "his" -- the exact same as the masculine gender.

4. Neuter, for words describing inanimate and non-personified objects like "rock," "shoe," "dog," "cat," etc. (Exceptions occur when personifying an object such as a ship, or one's pet.) The appropriate pronouns for this gender are "it," "it," and "its."

This is why it is incorrect grammar to say "Each student must turn in his or her own work." In this sentence, "student" has common gender. The possessive pronouns used in the predicate, "his" and "her," have masculine and feminine gender, respectively. Ergo, this sentence has no gender agreement. The correct way to say this sentence is "Each student must turn in his own work." In this case, "his" is the common gendered possessive pronoun. Similarly, it is also incorrect to say "Each student must turn in their own work." because there is number disagreement between the subject and pronoun.

Another example:

The BOY ate HIS supper quietly.

The GIRL ate HER supper quietly.

The CHILD ate HIS supper quietly. --NOT: The CHILD ate HIS or HER supper quietly. If we know from context the gender of said "child" then the masculine OR feminine possesive pronoun can be substituted-- but not both!

The cat ate ITS supper quietly.

74.167.201.232 (talk) 07:26, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Well, your "professor" is flat-out wrong (or extremely old-fashioned). As the Wikipedia article goes to great pains to explain, English has no genders at all. Your prescriptive grammar used to be common in formal English, much less so in the vernacular. Something like it is necessary in any language where masculine/feminine agreement is mandatory. Your notion of four genders is no more than a teaching trick to emphasize a point (a good teacher of any subject has a bunch of those). English looks back at the sex of the person to distinguish between he and she; what careful speakers of English actually do if they do not know the sex, or do not wish to specify it, has changed.

Your example The child ate his supper quietly is especially inept -- in British English they say The child ate its supper quietly (this seems to be the official style on www.bbc.co.uk). The phrase his or her has become so common in English in the last half century that you must use it to avoid confusion. Many young people will hear The child ate his supper quietly and think you know the sex of the child is male; there are two ways to avoid this: his or her supper (formal or informal) or their supper (informal or slang).

More generally, a great deal of ink is wasted by editorialists trying to impose prescriptive grammatical rules on the English language. Many of these rules were invented 2 or 3 centuries ago in an effort to increase the prestige of the English language by adopting rules from classical Greek and Latin. They did not describe usage at the time, but were a conscious effort to change usage. -- Solo Owl (talk) 17:51, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Why is not then 'child' a masculine noun? What is the definition of "masculine gender" in English? What are grounds for the common gender from language itself? dnik ► 12:49, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

No, it is NOT incorrect grammar to say, "each student must turn in his or her own work." English has no gender system outside of the pronouns, and if you want to be technical about it, every noun was made neuter by the Gender Shift. As a result of a collapsed gender system, no pronominal usage is more right than others, they just reflect different ways of characterizing each noun. For example, "his or her," for indeterminate gender shows a desire to use personal (not it) pronouns, but maintaining natural law of gender. "His" or "her" for indeterminate is a personal, but not necessarily natural default. All of these are perfectly grammatical. I think you've had a little too much prescription in your English education. Grammar is a fluid thing, and that fluidity is what makes it powerful. Choice of grammar is the soul of linguistic expression. LokiClock (talk) 15:43, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Dear sirs, this 4-gender idea is really quite an interesting theory. There are a few limitations to working on WP which I do not think any of you realize. WP is not for original contributions. Thus you cannot present or argue this theory if it is your theory. If it is not your theory you must identify whose it is and where you found it. You may then make no original modifications to it. As to whether it is accurate, well, linguistics is seldom an exact science. Most of it is interpretive. It makes no sense at all to argue for a "correct" interpretation and less sense to do it here. How high is the sky? This is strictly an interpretive concept. If we are going to present any interpretations then they cannot be original and you must identify whose they are. In general this article has the tag at the top because all it does is present interpretaions without identification. If you really want to help, find the sources of these ideas, let us know. Thanks for your attention.Dave (talk) 18:42, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Humphreys, Gordon MA : Teach Yourself English Grammar: EUP, London 1956. "Some nouns may refer to either male or female: parent, neighbour, child. These are said to be Common Gender" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.102.214.6 (talk) 11:59, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Treating Croatian, Serbian, Czech, Slovak etc.

These languages have the same gender system, masc/fem/neut + animacy splitting masculine. I propose treating them in the same way. Any objections? Should we have a separate list, or a separate entry in "more than three genders"? All such languages have the same system (at least: Slovene, Slovak, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Czech).

Anyone aware about other languages? Bulgarian? Ukrainian? From the description in Wikipedia it has a similar system as well (see Ukrainian grammar).

I would appreciate opinions from the experts before I do a major change in the article. dnik ► 09:47, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Male and female speech

I am no linguist, but from what I understand of everything coming before it, the Male and female speech section is totally out of place in this article, which is about a grammatical property of words, not the intersection of (human) gender and language. Unless noun class plays a special role in sex-specific languages (in which case this should be mentioned here), perhaps these points should be moved to Gender rôle in language. Lusanaherandraton (talk) 03:49, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Uter

What about the "uter" used e.g. in swedish? Not a single word either in the article nor in the discussion. (Well at least up to now :-)) --Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.179.143.145 (talk) 10:37, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

It's mentioned under the name "common gender". FilipeS (talk) 15:42, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Objects and abstractions

This section is entirely devoted to the idea of lexical arbitration. The very next section contradicts this, the entire point being that it is only one possible explanation of gender assignment. I suggest that the section be rewritten, and the examples integrated with the lexical gender assignment section. EDIT: To make it clear, here, the complaint is that the point of view is not neutral. LokiClock (talk) 15:57, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid it's not clear at all what is your complaint. FilipeS (talk) 15:43, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

There is nothing inherent about the moon or a potato which makes them objectively "male" or "female".

Well, here I'd like to offer an argument. Yes, in Romance languages "sun" is masculine and "moon" is feminine, while in Germanic languages it is the other way around. Well, in Norse mythology (and in the pre-Christian religions of other Germanic tribes) the Moon was a male god, while the sun was a goddess. In Roman Mythology, the sun god is male and the moon god is female. Whether the language was influenced by the mythology or the other way around is disputable, though... Wilsonsamm (talk) 23:04, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

If you're looking for a water-tight logic to the assignment of gender, you will be disappointed. Sure, there are some examples that are intuitive but plenty others that are not. There is also some consistency to some concepts -- for example in Italian, where things you can go into (such as a house) are (or tend to be ?) feminine; or in German, where diminutives are neuter. But overall, no.76.113.105.186 (talk) 06:28, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Asian Languages

This article makes no mention of east Asian languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc). I think we should have some information about them - at least add them to the classification list. Considering we even have a fairly-detailed section on (globally) insignificant languages such as Australian Aboriginal varieties, I think we should have something on these major languages too. 220.253.177.67 (talk) 07:06, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Japanese and Korean are generally described as having no gender. Thus they don't appear on that list, but do appear at Noun class#Languages without noun classes or grammatical genders. Although each language has several semantic noun classes, since these are not obligatorily marked in morpho-syntax (no declination, no agreement), they are not really genders as linguists think of them. I think the case is similar for Chinese, but that's beyond my area of study. Cnilep (talk) 08:35, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

"Southern Dutch"

Prior to 12 September 2010, this article read:

The masculine and the feminine have merged into a common gender in standard Dutch, but a distinction is still made by many when using pronouns, and in some dialects: see gender in Dutch grammar.

On that date User:Morgengave added, "and in spoken South-Dutch". In her/his edit summary, Morgengave argues, "Tussentaal is not considered a dialect."

On 21 September I changed the relevant passage to:

...but a distinction is still made by many when using pronouns, and in some spoken varieties. See Gender in Dutch grammar.

A few hours later, Morgengave changed "some spoken varieties" to "Southern-Dutch varieties". I admit I don't know any specifics here (I don't even know whether South-Dutch or Southern-Dutch are specifically described as varieties), so I am not the best judge. However, if (as the older version suggests) there are a few varieties that maintain this distinction, its probably unnecessary to name them or describe them, or is it? Cnilep (talk) 08:10, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Cnilep - if we can be clearer by replacing one word ("some") by another ("Southern-Dutch"), let's be clearer. The distinction between masculine and feminine gender is one of the defining characteristics of all varieties of the South-Dutch spoken language (Belgium and parts in the South of the Netherlands; more than 1/4 of all Dutch speakers). Definite and indefinite articles, adjectives, demonstratives, possessives, etc. are all aligned to masculine or feminine gender (and even the neuter gender is in fact a bit more visible) - unlike in Northern Dutch. "Some variants" underestimate the number of users that still make this distinction, and seem to imply that these varieties are spread geographically. Morgengave (talk) 08:17, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for replying, Morgengave. This is interesting, and I hope you will continue to work on it. The problem as I see it is that the current description on this page is not clear; at least, it's not clear to me. Is it the case that there are two genders in nearly all varieties spoken in Belgium and the south of the Netherlands, but not in the north of the Netherlands? If so, that it interesting and should be mentioned (with reliable sources cited). What is the situation outside of Europe, say in Suriname or the Antilles, by the way?

Am I correct in assuming that by "South Dutch" or "Southern-Dutch" you mean some set of varieties in Belgium and the southern Netherlands defined by their geographic location? Is this different from "Flemish" (either in the sense of Vlaams or Belgisch-Nederlands)? If so, that should be explained, again with reliable sources.

Finally, the page Dutch grammar currently says, "In certain Belgian Dutch dialectal forms of standard Dutch however, the distinction between masculine and feminine noun genders survives with the use of pronouns" (no source given). This is, I take it, separate from the broader preservation of gender in the varieties you are talking about, right? This seems like a long and complicated story, and I am not convinced that changing the word "some" to the word "Southern" on this page makes it at all clearer. On the other hand, I'm not sure that a parenthesis on this page is the best place to illuminate it, either. Thank you again for your patience and your willingness to explain the situation. Cnilep (talk) 09:54, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Hello Cnilep. (1) Yes, that's correct. North-Dutch has two genders: the common one (masc-fem) and neuter. South-Dutch has three: masc, fem and neuter (like German). North-Dutch has been used to set the standard for written Dutch. Therefore, in formal written Dutch, only two genders are used - this is also the case in Belgium. In spoken South-Dutch the three genders are normally used, this is done in formal speech as well (doctors, lawyers, during job interviews, etc.) to great dismay of some intellectuals who would like to align the spoken language to North-Dutch (see e.g.,: Geert van Istendael). In informal writing, the three genders are also frequently used (internet, text messages, etc.) and in recent years, the three genders are also increasingly applied to dialogues in literary works. Suriname and the Antilles were colonies of the Netherlands, and their language as a consequence originates from North-Dutch and thus only has these two genders. To digress a bit: Afrikaans evolved from North-Dutch and has lost even the separation between the common and neuter genders. (2) Yes, this is different from "Flemish". First of all, the term Flemish in linguistics is normally reserved for the Dutch dialects of the old county of Flanders (West-, East-, Zeeuws- and French Flanders). The other two Belgian Dutch regiolects are Brabantian and Limburgian. Secondly, Flemish, Brabantian and Limburgian are regiolects that cross the Belgo-Dutch border. Thirdly, Belgisch-Nederlands is a term used for the standard Dutch used in formal writing in Belgium. This official variant only uses two genders. However, it does incorporate several thousands of (South-)Dutch words that are typically only used in Belgium. Because all these reasons, the preference is given to the term "Zuid-Nederlands" (South-Dutch). (3) Yes, it's separate from these variants. The use of pronouns basically means that refer to a word by using its gender. Eg: "Ik ben een activiteit aan het organiseren, ik hoop dat iedereen ze leuk vindt." - translated as: "I am organizing an activity; I hope that everyone will like her." ("Activiteit" is a feminine word in Dutch) In North-Dutch, the dinstinction between masculine and feminine words is no longer visible in the articles, and adjectives etc. are no longer aligned with the masc or fem gender. Therefore, most speakers consider all common words to be masculine and will always refer to pronouns as "he". So they would consider "activiteit" to be masculine. But even in standard Dutch the word should be considered feminine when referring to it (so it's a "she"). In reality, people will have to consult a dictionary - or just have a lot of experience in writing (journalists, etc.) or can speak German (Deutsch and Dutch evolved from the same proto-language, so genders are in many if not most cases identical.) So to make a long story short: ""in standard Dutch, the distinction between masculine and feminine survives when referring to pronouns; and in spoken South-Dutch the articles, adjectives etc. are still aligned with these genders."" This one short sentence can sum the difference nicely up. Morgengave (talk) 20:42, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that might do nicely, though I still have two caveats. First, if this conservative gender system exists primarily in South Dutch and not elsewhere, that is a proper statement. But if there are conservative 3-gender systems in other dialects or varieties, a vaguer description on this page with a link to a fuller description elsewhere might be better. Second, though not strictly material to this discussion, I would love to see a South Dutch page elsewhere on Wikipedia. This should happen on the English wiki and the Dutch wiki as well; nl:Zuid-Nederlands is a DAB linking to both nl:Nederlands and nl:Belgisch-Nederlands under the heading "Taalkundig". Cnilep (talk) 22:53, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Hello again, Cnilep. (1) As far as I know, the only other variants are the ones in the East of the Netherlands. Linguistically, these varieties however belong to Low German and not to Dutch. I am not an expert in the gender-systems in the dialects in the Netherlands - but I have always read that it was only retained in South-Dutch (and in Low German and of course German). Perhaps we can consult/involve some other people. There's no rush; the one sentence on this page is also not very important. (2) There's a page on the Dutch Wikipedia that partially covers this topic: nl: Tussentaal. I don't know whether you can read the Dutch, or whether the available translation tools give a good result. So I will quickly summarize it: in Dutch-speaking Belgium dialects have been on the wane, as has happened in the Netherlands. In Belgium however, they are gradually being replaced by one common regiolect (de "Tussentaal"), which is too close to standard Dutch to be considered a dialect, but has retained some enduring characteristics (like the three gender structure, the additional second persons "gij" and "gijle", the enclitic verb form when aking questions nl: enclise, the dimunitives on -ke, etc.) that clearly separate it from standard Dutch. Morgengave (talk) 19:02, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Iranian Aryan languages

Can somebody tell me if there are gender in Iranian languages? I think only "kurdish" got gender, the other Iranian languages are neutral??? --Alsace38 (talk) 19:20, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Kurdish has male and female gender, so have Zazaki and Pashto. Persian does not have gender and does not even distinguish between "she" and "he" (both are u, but "it" is ân). Neither Gilaki and Mazanderani have gender, nor Ossete. Of Balochi, I don't know. Of the historical stages, both Old Persian and Avesta are three-gender languages. Sasanian Middle Persian already lacks gender. Sogdian seems to lack it too (plz wait till tomorrow). Curryfranke (talk) 19:14, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Origin of Indo-European gender system?

I think there is a good need of providing the origin of the PIE gender system. Maybe there is a need of a linguist like Cyril Babaev here. Komitsuki (talk) 09:06, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

general comment

This is a depressingly confused article.Pamour (talk) 15:51, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

"Four-gender" in Slavic languages?

  Note. In Slavic languages marked with an asterisk (*), traditionally only masculine, feminine and
  neuter genders are recognized, with animacy as a separate category for the masculine; the actual
  situation is similar to Czech and other Slavic languages, so they may be analyzed as four-gender
  languages as well.

Animation influents not only masculine gender (i.e. accusative forming for masculine nouns and ajectives referring to them), but also appointing pronouns selection: Russian: что for unanimated and кто for animated. ru:User:Ignatus (91.122.70.186 (talk) 12:19, 29 June 2011 (UTC))

Why is it even called gender?

Why did the linguists (I assume) decide to call these categories of nouns masculine and feminine? Why not class 1 and class 2, or this and that, or good and bad? Wouldn't consideration of this question be a good addition? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.76.100.14 (talk) 03:23, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

The genders are called masculine and feminine because the terms originated in Latin and Greek (Greek ἀρσενικόν, θηλυκόν arsenikón, thēlykón),[1] where nouns referring to male persons were in the masculine gender and nouns referring to female persons were in the feminine. The converse wasn't true: masculine gender doesn't refer only to male things or feminine gender only to female things, but still comparing noun gender to natural sex made the best sense.

About the word "gender", it originally just meant "kind", since it came from gener-, the stem of Latin genus. So if we understand it etymologically, it means the same thing as "noun class", and has nothing to do with sex. — Eru·tuon 00:28, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

See the article gender. FilipeS (talk) 16:18, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Gender Agreement / Irregular Inflection

I'm barely an intermediate student of Spanish, but I'm fairly sure that "agua" takes the masculine determiner "el" in the singular, but the feminine determiner "las" in the plural. As such, "los aguas frescas" would actually be incorrect; it would be "el agua fresca"/"las aguas frecas." Any comments from native speakers before I change this? Zuky79 (talk) 08:04, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm no Spanish speaker, but Googling (esp. on Google Books) would seem to support your belief. In any case this sentence in the article needs clarifying - at the moment it's hard to know what it's trying to say.--Kotniski (talk) 09:04, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

In Spanish, feminine words in the singular that begin with a stressed a-, like agua, take the articles el or un instead of the usual la or una (though there are a few that don't), and only if the article directly precedes the stressed a-. So, to give another example, it's un hacha afilada but una afilada hacha. So this is not unlike English "an".--JorisvS (talk) 10:48, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

And yes, in the plural they are like any other feminine word. --JorisvS (talk) 10:52, 12 December 2011 (UTC)