Grammatical Gender

In linguistics, grammatical gender is defined as a system of noun classification present in approximately one fourth of the world's languages. In languages with grammatical gender, every noun must pertain to one category called gender. The different genders form a closed set of usually 2 or 3 divisions, in which all the nouns are included. Very few items can belong to several classes at once. Common gender divisions include: masculine, feminine, neuter, animate, or inanimate.

In a few languages, the gender assignation of nouns is solely determined by their meaning or attributes (e.g. biological sex, humanness, animacy). However, in most languages, this semantic division is only partially valid, and many nouns may belong to a gender category that contrasts with their meaning (e.g. the word "manliness" could be of feminine gender). In this case, the gender assignation can also be influenced by the morphology or phonology of the noun, or in some cases, can be completely arbitrary.

Grammatical gender manifests itself when words related to a noun (e.g. determiners, pronouns, adjectives) change their form (inflection) according to the gender of noun they refer to (agreement). The parts of speech affected by gender agreement, the circumstances in which it occurs, and the way words are marked for gender vary cross-linguistically. Gender inflection may interact with other grammatical categories (e.g. number, case).

Grammatical gender is typical of the Afro-Asiatic, Dravidian, Indo-European, and Northeast Caucasian language families; as well as several Australian aboriginal languages (e.g. Dyirbal, Kalaw Lagaw Ya). Also, most Niger–Congo languages have extensive systems of noun classes, which can be grouped into several grammatical genders.

Grammatical gender is usually absent from the Altaic, Austronesian, Sino-Tibetan, Uralic and most Native American language families.

Modern English is not considered to have grammatical gender, although historically it did.