In linguistics , a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all nouns inherently carry one value of the grammatical category called gender . The values present in a given language, of which there are usually two or three, are called the genders of that language.
59-744: Butyrsky (masculine), Butyrskaya (feminine), or Butyrskoye (neuter) may refer to: With the addition of a diminutive suffix , Butyrka (singular) or Butyrki (plural) may refer to: List of diminutives by language#Russian The following is a list of diminutives by language. English has a great variety of historical diminutives adopted from other languages but many of these are lexicalized . Productive diminutives are infrequent to nonexistent in Standard English in comparison with many other languages. In Lowland Scots diminutives are frequently used. The most common diminutive suffixes are -ie , -ock , -ockie (double diminutive) or
118-637: A -le suffix (the e being distinctly pronounced, but not stressed). For example, a small house would be a "Häusle" or a little girl a "Mädle". A unique feature of Swabian is that words other than nouns may be suffixed with -le, which is not the case with other German dialects (except Bernese Swiss German), High German, or other languages: wasele (diminutive of was , what ) or jetzetle (diminutive of jetzt , now ) or kommele (diminutive of kommen , come ). (In both Spanish and Italian, these may be formed similarly, e.g. igualito – diminutive of igual , same and pochino or pochettino - diminutive of poco ,
177-400: A bridge ( German : Brücke , f. ) more often used the words 'beautiful', 'elegant', 'pretty', and 'slender', while Spanish speakers, whose word for bridge is masculine ( puente , m. ), used 'big', 'dangerous', 'strong', and 'sturdy' more often. However, studies of this kind have been criticized on various grounds and yield an unclear pattern of results overall. A noun may belong to
236-526: A different meaning: A few words exist solely in a diminutive form, e.g. zeepaardje ( seahorse ) and sneeuwklokje ( Snowdrop ), while others, e.g. meisje ( girl ), originally a diminutive of meid ( maid ), have acquired a meaning independent of their non-diminutive forms. See other examples. A diminutive can also sometimes be added to an uncountable noun to refer to a single portion: ijs ( ice , ice cream ) → ijsje ( ice cream treat , cone of ice cream ), bier ( beer ) → biertje, cola → colaatje. When used,
295-504: A diminutive suffix to some extent but is often used as a slang suffix which is very colloquial. See latin diminutive . In the Latin language the diminutive is formed also by suffixes of each gender affixed to the word stem . Each variant ending matches with a blend of the variant secondary demonstrative pronouns: In Old Latin , ollus , olla , ollum ; later ille , illa , illud (< illum- da to set off ileum ). Similarly,
354-401: A given class because of characteristic features of its referent , such as sex, animacy, shape, although in some instances a noun can be placed in a particular class based purely on its grammatical behavior. Some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", but others use different definitions for each. Many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in
413-445: A language relate to sex, such as when an animate –inanimate distinction is made. Note, however, that the word "gender" derives from Latin genus (also the root of genre ) which originally meant "kind", so it does not necessarily have a sexual meaning. A classifier, or measure word , is a word or morpheme used in some languages together with a noun, principally to enable numbers and certain other determiners to be applied to
472-462: A language which uses classifiers normally has a number of different ones, used with different sets of nouns. These sets depend largely on properties of the things that the nouns denote (for example, a particular classifier may be used for long thin objects, another for flat objects, another for people, another for abstracts, etc.), although sometimes a noun is associated with a particular classifier more by convention than for any obvious reason. However it
531-640: A little/a few). Many variants of Swabian also have a plural diminutive suffix: -la. E.g.: "oi Mädle, zwoi Mädla." In High Alemannic the standard suffix -li is added to the root word. A little would be äs bitzli (literally a little bite) as to "ein bisschen" in Standard German. The diminutive form of bitzli is birebitzli . Vowels of proper names often turn into an umlaut in Highest Alemannic, whereas in High Alemannic it remains
590-405: A more colloquial "cute" usage would be Mädl , Madl or Mäderl . It is regular for Austrians to replace the normal Bisschen ('a little' as in "Can I have a little more?") with Bissel . This has become a very distinctive feature of Austrian German. Contrary to the previous section, umlaut are not used that frequently (Gurke - Gürkchen vs. Gurkerl). A familiar example of the -erl diminutive
649-417: A noun manifests itself in two principal ways: in the modifications that the noun itself undergoes, and in modifications of other related words ( agreement ). Grammatical gender manifests itself when words related to a noun like determiners , pronouns or adjectives change their form ( inflect ) according to the gender of noun they refer to ( agreement ). The parts of speech affected by gender agreement,
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#1732797549056708-406: A reduction in size and they are not merely restricted to nouns. The nuances of meaning expressed by diminutives are particularly unique to Dutch and can be difficult to master for non-native speakers. Diminutives are very productive endings, they can change the function of a word and are formed by adding one of the suffixes -je , -pje , -kje , -tje , -etje to the word in question, depending on
767-497: A system include later forms of Proto-Indo-European (see below ), Sanskrit , some Germanic languages , most Slavic languages , a few Romance languages ( Romanian , Asturian and Neapolitan ), Marathi , Latin , and Greek . Here nouns that denote animate things (humans and animals) generally belong to one gender, and those that denote inanimate things to another (although there may be some deviation from that principle). Examples include earlier forms of Proto-Indo-European and
826-525: A verb, as in, "ziehen" - "Zögling", "setzen" - "Setzling". Use of these diminutive suffixes on a finally stressed word stem causes umlaut of the stressed vowel. In Bavarian and Austrian German , the -l or -erl suffix can replace almost any usual German diminutive. For example, the standard word for 'girl' in German is Mädchen and, while Mädchen is still used frequently in Austrian German,
885-542: A way that sounds like the masculine declensions in South-Eastern Norwegian dialects. The same does not apply to Swedish common gender, as the declensions follow a different pattern from both the Norwegian written languages. Norwegian Nynorsk , Norwegian Bokmål and most spoken dialects retain masculine, feminine and neuter even if their Scandinavian neighbors have lost one of the genders. As shown,
944-407: Is Nannerl , the childhood name of Maria Anna Mozart , the sister of the celebrated composer. Historically, some common Austro-Bavarian surnames were also derived from (clipped) first names using the -l suffix; for example, (Jo)hann > Händl , Man(fred) > Mändl (both with epenthetic d and umlaut ), (Gott)fried > Friedl , and so on. In Swabian German this is done by adding
1003-436: Is das Mädchen , which is neuter because it is a diminutive of die Magd (feminine) – the maiden (Handmaid, maidservant, not: virgin). While Mädchen is an everyday word, Magd is not common in modern use—and in any meaning other than "female farm employee" it is associated with medieval language (as in fables, novels, etc.). However, -ling has a masculine gender. In the cases of "Zögling", "Setzling", this form nominalizes
1062-429: Is third-conjugation , but the diminutive conscrib ill are "scribble over" is first-conjugation. Grammatical gender Whereas some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", others use different definitions for each. Many authors prefer "noun classes" when none of the inflections in a language relate to sex or gender . According to one estimate, gender is used in approximately half of
1121-492: Is a third available gender, so nouns with sexless or unspecified-sex referents may be either masculine, feminine, or neuter. There are also certain exceptional nouns whose gender does not follow the denoted sex, such as the German Mädchen , meaning "girl", which is neuter. This is because it is actually a diminutive of "Magd" and all diminutive forms with the suffix -chen are neuter. Examples of languages with such
1180-534: Is also found in Dravidian languages . (See below .) It has been shown that grammatical gender causes a number of cognitive effects. For example, when native speakers of gendered languages are asked to imagine an inanimate object speaking, whether its voice is male or female tends to correspond to the grammatical gender of the object in their language. This has been observed for speakers of Spanish, French, and German, among others. Caveats of this research include
1239-523: Is also possible for a given noun to be usable with any of several classifiers; for example, the Mandarin Chinese classifier 个 ( 個 ) gè is frequently used as an alternative to various more specific classifiers. Grammatical gender can be realized as inflection and can be conditioned by other types of inflection, especially number inflection, where the singular-plural contrast can interact with gender inflection. The grammatical gender of
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#17327975490561298-613: Is assigned to one of the genders, and few or no nouns can occur in more than one gender. Gender is considered an inherent quality of nouns, and it affects the forms of other related words, a process called "agreement" . Nouns may be considered the "triggers" of the process, whereas other words will be the "target" of these changes. These related words can be, depending on the language: determiners , pronouns , numerals , quantifiers , possessives , adjectives , past and passive participles , articles , verbs , adverbs , complementizers , and adpositions . Gender class may be marked on
1357-541: Is from the Latin diminutive cuniculus . The use of diminutives is quite different between the dialects. The Alemannic dialects for example use the diminutive very often. There are two suffixes that can be systematically applied in German: The contemporary colloquial diminutives -chen and -lein are always neuter in their grammatical gender , regardless of the original word. For example, the common German word for girl
1416-418: Is masculine (meaning "lake") its genitive singular form is Sees , but when it is feminine (meaning "sea"), the genitive is See , because feminine nouns do not take the genitive -s . Gender is sometimes reflected in other ways. In Welsh , gender marking is mostly lost on nouns; however, Welsh has initial mutation , where the first consonant of a word changes into another in certain conditions. Gender
1475-416: Is one of the factors that can cause one form of mutation (soft mutation). For instance, the word merch "girl" changes into ferch after the definite article . This only occurs with feminine singular nouns: mab "son" remains unchanged. Adjectives are affected by gender in a similar way. Additionally, in many languages, gender is often closely correlated with the basic unmodified form ( lemma ) of
1534-454: Is only partially valid, and many nouns may belong to a gender category that contrasts with their meaning, e.g. the word for "manliness" could be of feminine gender, as it is in French with "la masculinité" and "la virilité". In such a case, the gender assignment can also be influenced by the morphology or phonology of the noun, or in some cases can be apparently arbitrary. Usually each noun
1593-415: Is reserved for abstract concepts derived from adjectives: such as lo bueno , lo malo ("that which is good/bad"). Natural gender refers to the biological sex of most animals and people, while grammatical gender refers to certain phonetic characteristics (the sounds at the end, or beginning) of a noun. Among other lexical items, the definite article changes its form according to this categorization. In
1652-512: Is that in the Dutch language also adjectives and adverbs can be conjugated as diminutives as if they were nouns. Diminutives are widely used in both languages, but possibly more so in the Afrikaans language. In some cases the diminutive in Afrikaans is the most commonly used, or even only form of the word: bietjie (few/little), mandjie (basket), baadjie (jacket) and boontjie (bean). In other cases
1711-579: The umlaut in combination with the suffixes -gie(n): In East Frisian Low Saxon , -je, -tje, and -pje are used as a diminutive suffix (e.g. huis becomes huisje (little house); boom becomes boompje (little tree)). Compare this with the High German suffix -chen (see above). Some words have a slightly different suffix, even though the diminutive always ends with -je. For example, man becomes mannetje (little man). All these suffixes East Frisian Low Saxon shares with Dutch. In Northern Low Saxon ,
1770-455: The "triggers" of the process, because they have an inherent gender, whereas related words that change their form to match the gender of the noun can be considered the "target" of these changes. These related words can be, depending on the language: determiners , pronouns , numerals , quantifiers , possessives , adjectives , past and passive participles , verbs , adverbs , complementizers , and adpositions . Gender class may be marked on
1829-905: The - je diminutive is rarely used, except maybe Gronings , such as in Buscherumpje , a fisherman's shirt. It is usually substituted with lütte , meaning "little", as in dat lütte Huus - the small house. The same goes for the North Germanic languages . Historically, some common Low German surnames were derived from (clipped) first names using the -ke(n) suffix; for example, Ludwig > Lüdeke , Wilhelm > Wilke(n) , Wernher > Werneke , and so on. Some of these name bases are difficult to recognize in comparison to standard German; for example, Dumke, Domke < Döm 'Thomas', Klitzke < Klitz 'Clement', etc. Some of these names may also have Slavic or mixed Slavic-Germanic origins. Yiddish frequently uses diminutives. In Yiddish
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1888-457: The Caithness –ag (the latter from Scottish Gaelic , and perhaps reinforcing the other two before it). -ie is by far the most common suffix used. Others are -le or -er for frequentative or diminutive emphasis. Less frequent diminutives are kin (often after the diminutive -ie ) and -lin . Examples include In Dutch , diminutives are used extensively. Their meaning often goes beyond
1947-876: The Western Dutch and later Standard Dutch form -tje has derived by palatalization ), -eke(n) , -ske(n) , -ie , -kie , and -pie are (still) regularly used in different dialects instead of the former mentioned. Some of these form part of expressions that became standard language: The form -ke(n) is nowadays still present in many women's names: Janneke (< Jan < Johannes, Dutch equivalent of John); Renske (< Rens, men's name); Marieke, Marijke, Mieke, Meike (all from Maria); Anneke (< Anna, Anne); Tineke (< Martine); Joke, Hanneke (< Johanna); and many others like Lieneke (<< Catharina, compare Caitlin), Lonneke, Wieteke, Dineke, Nelleke, etc. Similar women's names, such as Femke and Sjouke, exist in Frisian . Until
2006-400: The circumstances in which it occurs, and the way words are marked for gender vary between languages. Gender inflection may interact with other grammatical categories like number or case . In some languages the declension pattern followed by the noun itself will be different for different genders. The gender of a noun may affect the modifications that the noun itself undergoes, particularly
2065-448: The diminutive has mostly a neutral or positive connotation: The diminutive can, however, also be used pejoratively. Besides the above, Dutch also has the now no longer productive diminutive -lijn (similar to the German diminutive -lein ), which is preserved in several words like for example vendelijn "small flag", Duimelijn "Little Thumbling", vogelijn "little bird" and lievelijn "sweetie". The grammatical gender of words in
2124-550: The diminutive is always neuter, regardless of the original gender of the words. In Afrikaans , the diminutive is formed by adding one of the suffixes -ie., -pie, -kie, -'tjie, -tjie, -jie, -etjie to the word, depending on the latter's phonology (some exceptions exist to these rules): Diminutives of words that are themselves diminutives are used, for example baadjie (jacket) → baadjie tjie (little jacket). Such constructions do not appear in Dutch. Afrikaans has almost identical usage and grammar for diminutive words as Dutch ,
2183-514: The diminutive may be used figuratively rather than literally to imply affection, camaraderie, euphemism , sarcasm, or disdain, depending on context. German features words such as "Häuschen" for "small house", "Würstchen" for "small sausage" and "Hündchen" for "small dog". Diminutives are more frequently used than in English. Some words only exist in the diminutive form, e.g. "Kaninchen" ("rabbit") derived from Old French word conin , which in turn
2242-436: The diminutive of gladius ( sword ) is gladi olus , a plant whose leaves look like small swords. Adjectives as well as nouns can be diminished, including paul ulus (very small) from paulus (small). The diminutive ending for verbs is -ill- , placed after the stem and before the endings. The diminutive verb changes to the first conjugation , no matter what the original conjugation. Conscribere "write onto"
2301-738: The earliest family known to have split off from it, the extinct Anatolian languages (see below ). Modern examples include Algonquian languages such as Ojibwe . Here a masculine–feminine–neuter system previously existed, but the distinction between masculine and feminine genders has been lost in nouns (they have merged into what is called common gender ), though not in pronouns that can operate under natural gender. Thus nouns denoting people are usually of common gender, whereas other nouns may be of either gender. Examples include Danish and Swedish (see Gender in Danish and Swedish ), and to some extent Dutch (see Gender in Dutch grammar ). The dialect of
2360-516: The early twentieth century the diminutive was a normal way (in the Netherlands, not in Belgium) of forming men's names into women's names: Dirk → Dirkje, Pieter → Pietertje. In Dutch, the diminutive is not merely restricted to nouns, but the diminutive form is a noun in some cases. Note that adverbs get an extra s appended to the diminutive: Some nouns have two different diminutives, each with
2419-481: The effect for German speakers has also led to a proposal that the effect is restricted to languages with a two-gender system, possibly because such languages are inclined towards a greater correspondence between grammatical and natural gender. Another kind of test asks people to describe a noun, and attempts to measure whether it takes on gender-specific connotations depending on the speaker's native language. For example, one study found that German speakers describing
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2478-532: The existence of words that denote male and female, such as the difference between "aunt" and "uncle" is not enough to constitute a gender system. In other languages, the division into genders usually correlates to some degree, at least for a certain set of nouns, such as those denoting humans, with some property or properties of the things that particular nouns denote. Such properties include animacy or inanimacy, " humanness " or non-humanness, and biological sex . However, in most languages, this semantic division
2537-631: The following examples are given in masculine single form): Some Yiddish diminutives have been incorporated into modern Israeli Hebrew : Imma (mother) to Immaleh and Abba (father) to Abbaleh. A common diminutive suffix in Icelandic is -lingur : Examples: The Swedish use of diminutive is heavily dominated by prefixes such as "mini-", "lill-", "små-" and "pytte-" and all of these prefixes can be put in front of almost all nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs: The suffixes "-ling" and "-ing" are also used to some extent: The suffix "-is" can be used as
2596-416: The language Afrikaans was derived from (detailed above). There are differences in Dutch as compared to Afrikaans. One is that suffixes end with -je (e.g. beet je , a [little] bit, mand je , basket) as compared, i.e. in Afrikaans (e.g. bietj ie , mandj ie —same meanings respectively). This reflects the usage, i.e. in the dialects of the province of Holland that most of Dutch settlers came from. Another difference
2655-497: The latter's phonology: A few words have several diminutives: kip → kipp etje or kip je ( chicken ), rib → ribb etje or rib je ( rib ). One word has even three possible diminutives: rad → rad je , ra a d je or rad ertje ( cog ). A few words have more than one diminutive, of which one is formed by lengthening of the vowel sound with a different meaning. Examples: gat-gaatje/gatje, glas-glaasje/glasje, lot-lootje/lotje, pad-paadje/padje The diminutive suffixes -ke(n) (from which
2714-764: The merger of masculine and feminine in these languages and dialects can be considered a reversal of the original split in Proto-Indo-European (see below ). Some gender contrasts are referred to as classes ; for some examples, see Noun class . In some of the Slavic languages , for example, within the masculine and sometimes feminine and neuter genders, there is a further division between animate and inanimate nouns—and in Polish , also sometimes between nouns denoting humans and non-humans. (For details, see below .) A human–non-human (or "rational–non-rational") distinction
2773-438: The noun itself, but can also be marked on other constituents in a noun phrase or sentence. If the noun is explicitly marked, both trigger and target may feature similar alternations. As an example, we consider Spanish , a language with two gender categories: "natural" vs "grammatical". "Natural" gender can be masculine or feminine, while "grammatical" gender can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. This third, or "neuter" gender
2832-1022: The noun itself, but will also always be marked on other constituents in a noun phrase or sentence. If the noun is explicitly marked, both trigger and target may feature similar alternations. Three possible functions of grammatical gender include: Moreover, grammatical gender may serve to distinguish homophones. It is a quite common phenomenon in language development for two phonemes to merge, thereby making etymologically distinct words sound alike. In languages with gender distinction, however, these word pairs may still be distinguishable by their gender. For example, French pot ("pot") and peau ("skin") are homophones /po/ , but disagree in gender: le pot vs. la peau . Common systems of gender contrast include: Nouns that denote specifically male persons (or animals) are normally of masculine gender; those that denote specifically female persons (or animals) are normally of feminine gender; and nouns that denote something that does not have any sex, or do not specify
2891-455: The noun, and sometimes a noun can be modified to produce (for example) masculine and feminine words of similar meaning. See § Form-based morphological criteria , below. Agreement , or concord, is a grammatical process in which certain words change their form so that values of certain grammatical categories match those of related words. Gender is one of the categories which frequently require agreement. In this case, nouns may be considered
2950-604: The noun. They are not regularly used in English or other European languages, although they parallel the use of words such as piece(s) and head in phrases like "three pieces of paper" or "thirty head of cattle". They are a prominent feature of East Asian languages , where it is common for all nouns to require a classifier when being quantified—for example, the equivalent of "three people" is often "three classifier people". A more general type of classifier ( classifier handshapes ) can be found in sign languages . Classifiers can be considered similar to genders or noun classes, in that
3009-563: The old Norwegian capital Bergen also uses common gender and neuter exclusively. The common gender in Bergen and in Danish is inflected with the same articles and suffixes as the masculine gender in Norwegian Bokmål . This makes some obviously feminine noun phrases like "a cute girl", "the well milking cow" or "the pregnant mares" sound strange to most Norwegian ears when spoken by Danes and people from Bergen since they are inflected in
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#17327975490563068-463: The possibility of subjects' "using grammatical gender as a strategy for performing the task", and the fact that even for inanimate objects the gender of nouns is not always random. For example, in Spanish, female gender is often attributed to objects that are "used by women, natural, round, or light" and male gender to objects "used by men, artificial, angular, or heavy." Apparent failures to reproduce
3127-403: The primary diminutive is -l or -ele in singular, and -lekh or -elekh in plural, sometimes involving a vowel trade in the root. Thus Volf becomes Velvl, Khaim: Khaiml, mame (mother): mamele, Khane: Khanele, Moyshe: Moyshele, kind (child): kindl or kindele, Bobe (grandmother): Bobele, teyl (deal): teylekhl (mote), regn (rain): regndl, hant (hand): hentl, fus (foot): fisl. The longer version of
3186-506: The same. Proper names: Christian becomes Chrigi, in Highest Alemannic: Chrigu. Sebastien becomes Sebi resp. Sebu. Sabrina becomes Sabsi resp. Sabä. Corinne becomes Cogi resp. Corä. Barbara becomes Babsi resp. Babsä, Robert becomes Röbi resp. Röbu. Jakob becomes Köbi resp. Köbu. Gabriel becomes Gäbu in Highest Alemannic. In varieties of West Low German , spoken in the east of the Netherlands, diminutives occasionally use
3245-577: The sex of their referent, have come to belong to one or other of the genders, in a way that may appear arbitrary. Examples of languages with such a system include most of the modern Romance languages , the Baltic languages , the Celtic languages , some Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Hindi ), and the Afroasiatic languages . This is similar to systems with a masculine–feminine contrast, except that there
3304-675: The suffix ( -ele instead of -l ) sounds generally more affectionate and usually used with proper names. Sometimes a few variations of the plural diminutive forms are possible: balebos (owner, boss): balebeslekh (newly-wed young men): balebatimlekh (petty bourgeois men). Many other diminutives of Slavic origin are commonly used, mostly with proper names: These suffixes can also be combined: Khaim/Khaimkele, Avrom/Avromtshikl, Itsik/Itshenyu. Some Yiddish proper names have common non-trivial diminutive forms, somewhat similar to English names such as Bob or Wendy: Akive/Kive, Yishaye/Shaye, Rivke/Rivele. Yiddish also has diminutive forms of adjectives (all
3363-407: The way in which the noun inflects for number and case . For example, a language like Latin , German or Russian has a number of different declension patterns, and which pattern a particular noun follows may be highly correlated with its gender. For some instances of this, see Latin declension . A concrete example is provided by the German word See , which has two possible genders: when it
3422-422: The word, this assignment might bear some relationship with the meaning of the noun (e.g. "woman" is usually feminine), or may be arbitrary. In a few languages, the assignment of any particular noun (i.e., nominal lexeme, that set of noun forms inflectable from a common lemma) to one grammatical gender is solely determined by that noun's meaning, or attributes, like biological sex, humanness, or animacy. However,
3481-408: The world's languages . According to one definition: "Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words." Languages with grammatical gender usually have two to four different genders, but some are attested with up to 20. Common gender divisions include masculine and feminine; masculine, feminine, and neuter; or animate and inanimate. Depending on the language and
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