Grammatical gender

grammatical gender (or the existence of noun classes) is an arbitrary characteristic of natural linguistic systems and a system of nominal classification that some languages have in which the elements Nominals are classified into a finite number of classes, for which there are generally grammatical agreement rules.

Gender can be analyzed as a grammatical feature involved in gender agreement relationships.

Introduction

The gender is a linguistic property in a language, and there is no logical necessity in its relation to biological sex. Although in certain languages (for example, the Indo-European) one or several of the genders are used mainly for one of the biological sexes, surely in no language in the world for sexual beings is there a necessary relationship between biological sex and the gender of the word to designate the be lively This is mainly due to the fact that there is no necessary immediate correspondence between the meanings of a language and the class of extralinguistic entities. Most of the world's languages lack grammatical gender: only a third of them use some form of grammatical gender.

Approximately 20% of the world's languages have noun gender distinction, which means that nouns fall into noun classes or genders (which can be formal classes or semantically motivated classes). In Indo-European languages there are generally 2 or 3 strict grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, and sometimes also neuter); in Semitic languages, it is common to distinguish between 2 genders (masculine and feminine).

In Indo-European languages, the usual number of genders varies between two and three, usually masculine, feminine or neuter, so that concert with a certain flexion. Other languages, such as the Bantu, distinguish a large number of genders, although it is better to speak of nominal classes; specifically, their number exceeds ten. In Protobantu, the main classes in the singular are 1 (for people), 3 (for elongated objects and also trees), 5 (objects that appear in pairs or groups), 7 (for instruments or media) and 9 (for certain animals). Classes 2, 4, 6, and 8 are plural forms of classes 1, 3, 5, and 7. At the other extreme, the Chinese or Uralic language family and the Altaic zonal geographic group (Turkic, Mongolian, and Tungusic) do not distinguish gender.

Gender is a category that can appear in the pronoun, noun, and verb. In languages with grammatical gender, the most frequent thing is that the personal pronouns of the third person and the names are the ones that present differences in gender. The occurrence of gender difference in the verb, as in Semitic languages, is less frequent. When gender does appear in pronouns, it typically does so in third person forms and more rarely in first and second person forms as well (cases of languages with distinction in first and second person but not in third person are marginal, occurring in less than 0.5% of languages well documented).

Gender in Spanish

In Spanish it is a formal discrimination that has diverse contrastive capacities; the noun, the adjective, the article and some pronouns have gender. It is used to establish agreement between an adjective and the noun it qualifies and between an article and the noun it updates. The agreement is somewhat less strict when it comes to subject and attribute (These things are the worst, This person is you, etc).

Morphological classification

The masculine gender is the unmarked or inclusive form: the phrase "the students of this class" refers to male and female students; the feminine grammatical gender is the marked form and is therefore exclusive or exclusive: the phrase "the female students of this class" It does not also refer to those of the male sex, but only to those of the female sex. When referring to animated beings, it generally indicates the male or female sex, among other notions. It is usually expressed by means of constitutive morphemes:

• - or nothing for the male: waiter, lion, Abbot.
• - Yeah., - That one., - Lisa., Ina, - for the female: leona, Abbey, poet, chicken, actress.

There is also the grammatical gender neutral, although there are those who argue that it is not a gender as such, but rather the exponent of a grammatical class of words that designate certain abstract notions, among which articles (lo, which serves to substantiate adjectives and indicate abstract concepts: the deep, the external), the personal pronouns in the third person singular (it, the ), demonstratives (this, that, that), some indefinite pronouns (something, nothing) and quantifying adverbs (how much, how much, both). The gender in which the adjectives agree with them does not differ morphologically from the masculine singular, although there are authors who also know it as a neuter gender.

Semantic classification

In addition to the previous genders, there are words that are classified with the common, epicene and ambiguous genders. Thus, from the semantic point of view, the gender assigned to a lexical form can be:

• Common, the names that designate animated entities that have a single termination and different article. For example: the violinist, the violinist; the martyr, the martyr; the witness, the witness; the spy, the spy; the dentist; the dentist; etc. This group is owned by the active participations derived from verbal times as a student, attacker or outgoing, although there are historical exceptions, in professions where the labor functions of the biological sexes used to vary, as a servant/savian.
• Epicene, the names of animals that have a single grammatical gender for both biological sexes. e.g.: mouse, rat, frog, weasel, hare, ant, owl, beetle, vulture, dolphin, condor, flame. To specify sex, it is said "the male mouse", "the female mouse", "the male midwife", "the female midwife".
• Ambiguous, that of some nouns that indistinctly admit the male or female article. For example: sea and sea, bridge and bridge, heat and heat, rheumatism, tilde, etc.

In addition, sometimes gender, especially when referring to inanimate objects, serves as a marker for other semantic differences. Among the other contrastive capacities of the Spanish grammatical gender are the following:

• Large male (armchair, car) - Small female (chair, cart)
• Small male (Ring, Cube- Large female (ring, Cuba)
• Human male (human male)harvester, printer- Feminine thing (harvester, printer)
• Elogenous malecock, Fox) - Despective female (chicken, bitch)
• Individual male (tin- Female collective (wood)

Gender in Indo-European languages

Sanskrit, Latin, and classical Greek distinguished between three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. However, many more modern Indo-European languages have lost one of these three genders: in most Romance languages, in modern Celtic languages, and in the Baltic languages, the neuter gender has been assimilated into either the masculine or the feminine. In English, the gender distinction only exists in third person singular pronouns: he, he; she, she; (marginally, when the referent is a vehicle, a boat or a country, she can be used to refer to them, but otherwise he, she are only used for people); it, it, although in Old English the gender also existed in demonstratives and articles. In Dutch, the distinction between the feminine and the masculine has disappeared in the standard language; there are nouns of common gender (words with de, "de-woorden") and of neuter gender (words with het, "het- woorden"). Masculine and feminine only survive in some dialects and in the cultured language; furthermore, a distinction is made between feminine and masculine in 3rd person singular pronouns for sexed individuals, as in English. In many modern Iranian languages there are only two genders: in modern Persian there is only a distinction between human and non-human, and in Pashtu, between masculine and feminine. Many Indic languages have lost one of the three genders present in Sanskrit: Hindi- Urdu only differentiates between masculine and feminine, since the neuter has disappeared, whereas in Bengali the loss has gone further and the gender distinction no longer exists, or, more accurately, is not morphologically productive, although residues exist in the lexicon. The same is true of some other modern languages, such as Armenian, which have completely lost the gender distinction in both noun and pronoun.

The number of genders in the oldest reconstructible Indo-European is doubtful, since it seems that the oldest Anatolian languages only reflect a distinction between animate and inanimate gender in the adjective. Rodríguez Adrados has proposed that this is the oldest distinction and that the feminine gender also appeared secondarily in the rest of the branches.

In languages where the neuter gender exists, the contrast between animate/non-animate usually occurs. For example, in Russian the inflection varies in the accusative and genitive of non-animate masculine nouns, while it is the same for animate ones. Thus, автобус (avtobus, bus), a masculine noun, makes the accusative singular as автобус (avtobus), but the genitive as автобуса (avtobusa). But the animate noun Борис (Boris) does both the accusative and the genitive as Бориса (Borisa).

Indo-European languages traditionally have three genders, masculine, feminine and neuter, like Latin, Asturian, German or Russian. Others, such as Spanish or French, have lost the neuter, but keep it in the article to substantiate adjectives and in some pronouns (although there are authors who claim that there is no neuter gender at present). Likewise, Russian makes a distinction in both the masculine singular and the masculine plural between animate and non-animate, and Polish also makes this same distinction in the masculine plural. For its part, in English gender does not govern any inflection in adjectives or determiners, but it does in pronouns, so that genders can be deduced that way.

Grammatical gender in American languages

Gender is slightly less frequent among indigenous languages of the Americas than in other regions of the planet. However, there is no shortage of American languages with various types of grammatical gender, of various types (masculine/feminine, animate/inanimate, etc.).

Chinuk languages

For example, in the Chinuk languages spoken along the Columbia River in the states of Washington and Oregon, there are gender differences in nouns, verbs, pronouns, and demonstratives. In nouns and verbs the grammatical gender is marked by prefixes. Three genders are distinguished "masculine", "feminine" or "indifferent" (the latter is used when the gender is not explicitly specified or is unknown, see examples). Many names take on a masculine or feminine gender on a clear semantic basis, as in the following examples from the kathlamet:

Male	Women
iqt 'Oldman' iqsxísau 'monster (male)' ixkáqunq 'Another' ikásqax 'muchacho' Ikala 'Man' iialxtt 'Your older brother' ik Gadut 'dog'	aqt 'Old woman' aqsxísau 'monster (female)' axkáqunq 'Elm' akásqax 'muchacha.' akala 'woman' tokalxtt 'Your older sister' ak Gadut 'Watch'

There is also the option of not specifying the gender explicitly, but then a prefix ɬ- (common or unspecified gender) must be passed in.

Common gender
--qt 'An older person' --qsxísau 'a monster' --kuạilx̣ 'a person' --k Gadut 'a dog'

In all these examples there is a semantic basis based on clear sexual differentiation; however, as in Spanish, there are epicene animal names (where the same form designates both the male and the female, as in frog, liebre, < i>toad, whale', etc.):

Male	ipúkua 'lince', icixq 'Massa', iKípixll 'sea lion', ikuaii 'ballena', ipisticas 'mofeta', iatatát 'mapache'.
Women	a## 'cangrejo', ac/ 'caracol', aqískuax 'foca', apisticas 'tejón', aI 'something [of the mud]'.

Boas noted some trends, such as large animals tending to be male and smaller ones female (although he found counterexamples). Inanimates frequently receive unspecified gender:

Common gender	--Cuqua 'water', --xuímax 'isla', --pait 'cuerda', --tka 'nieve', --qáuulqt 'sangre', --kuaii 'poorness', --kcáma 'peine', --kí ku k Dry salmon crushed, --qapt 'salmon eggs'

Also, as in Spanish, many names for inanimate objects are arbitrarily gendered:

Male	i aqqi 'palo para excavar', icu q 'harpon', iKanim 'canoa', iYesqi 'door', iauík 'past tomorrow', iíxatatk 'camino', iáauick 'the tide'.
Women	aqi 'Key', tokmuks 'mora [of the zarzamora', aknuaks 'heart', toin 'night', toyou 'fire'.

Boas notes the tendency for abstract properties (smallness, sickness, cold) to be masculine, while plants and tools used with plants are feminine. Furthermore, the lexical gender in kathlament requires agreement within the sentence:

qust i-kipix - i-ax-i-ax ik-l-x-lucx-am

Look. MASC-lion.marino MASC-That...ENFAT MASC.ERG-MASC.ABS-RFL-See...PURP

'Look, a sea lion has come to see [the ritual dance]'

Algonquian languages

Another widely studied grammatical gender system is that of the Algonquian languages, which extended from Alberta and Montana in western North America to the east coast of North America (from Labrador to North Carolina). In these languages the gender system distinguishes between "animate" and "inanimate". There is an important semantic correlation between grammatical gender and entity type; thus the names that designate human beings, animals or plants are animate, although the gender of inanimate entities is not totally predictable, since some inanimate entities receive animate gender. Names of entities that move (such as humans or animals, but also spirits and heavy bodies) are grammatically "animate"; also the name of the trees and most of the metallic instruments are "animated". The names of pulpy fruits, tubers, and roots are also generally animate, although the names of berries, nuts, and vegetables that grow at ground level are inanimate (although these tendencies are clear, there are exceptions: the name for 'strawberry' is inanimate, while the name for 'raspberry' is animate in various languages). In siksiká (blackfoot) miitis- is animate when used for 'tree', but is inanimate when used for 'stick'. Gender is reflected not only in gender marks in the name but also in other verbal affixes and in demonstratives.

In siksiká, the singular suffix for inanimates is -wa after a vowel or -a after a consonant, while the plural suffix for inanimates is - iksi. The singular of inanimates is -yi (after a vowel, -i after a consonant) and the plural is -istsi. Some examples:

	Singular	Plural
Animated	♪wa 'Man' Ponokáwa 'alce' natáyowa 'lince' pósa 'cat' káksaakina 'hacha' ísska 'couple'	nineiksi 'Mans' Ponokáiksi 'somethings' natáyoiksi 'inces' pósiksi 'cats' káksaakiniksi 'Dochas' ísskiksi 'covers'
Inanimate	omahksikmiYi 'lago' Å.Yi 'carne' aohjiYi 'agua' owáaYi 'bone' Nipi 'hoja' mogultokááni 'head'	omahksikmiistsi 'lagos' Å.istsi 'carnes' aohkíístsi 'aguas' owástsi 'bones' Nipistsi 'Leaves' mogultokáánistsi 'heads'

Gender in other languages

Other languages have different classification criteria (gender) for their nouns. Thus, the Australian Dyirbal language has four classes:

• I - animated objects, men
• II - women, water, fire, violence
• III - edible fruits and vegetables
• IV - everything else

In Navajo, classification, which affects the verb, is done by the consistency, form, or [±animated] criteria of the nouns. For their part, the Bantu languages have systems that distinguish up to 22 different genders or nominal classes. The fula distinguishes up to 26 nominal classes.

In Basque there are two classes, animate (humans and other animals) and inanimate; however, they differ only in declension for locative or place cases (inesive, locative genitive, adlative, terminal adlative, ablative, and directional ablative). There are a few words with a feminine and masculine version, generally related ("cousin/cousin": lehengusu, lehengusina) or with very old roots and coming from languages with gender like Latin ("king": errege, from Latin regem; "queen": erregina, from Latin reginam). In kinship names, when it is necessary to encompass both sexes, the two names are joined ("son": seme; "daughter": alaba ; "son" (both sexes): seme-alaba) or there is a name that includes them: father: aita; mother: loves; father (both sexes): guraso.

Gender and sex

Gender in French countries: countries with male names are coloured in green and countries with female names in purple. The convention assigning a gender to each country is arbitrary.

The terms gender and sex should not be confused. The classification of the nominal class in masculine, feminine and neuter is misleading, since it is a class to which a noun belongs, and for which it governs or performs an inflection in some way. another grammatical element (in Spanish, in determiners, pronouns and adjectives; in English, only in pronouns, etc.).

Sometimes, the nomenclature natural gender (equivalent to sex) is used to contrast with grammatical gender. In the sentence Pedro is a very annoying visitor, the word visit has feminine grammatical gender and masculine natural gender. The grammatical gender is not based on the biological (extragrammatical) sex, which would be masculine, but on the class to which such a noun belongs, which is the feminine gender.

The natural gender of inanimate objects is neuter, but in Spanish their grammatical gender must necessarily be masculine or feminine.

It is wrong and the use of the word gender (both in its grammatical meaning and in its sociological meaning) as a synonym of sex, which defines a characteristic, should be avoided. biology of certain living species. In 2005, the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Dudes accepted the use of the term 'gender' in sociological and feminist studies to define an analytical category that addresses sociocultural inequalities based on the biological difference between men and women: gender studies, gender violence. In 2014, the Dictionary of the Spanish language included as the third meaning of the term 'gender' the "group to which human beings of each sex belong, understood from a sociocultural point of view instead of exclusively biological".