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In Linguistics , natural gender refers to natural characteristics of a being or object, as opposed to the grammatical classification of the noun which designates that being or object. For example, in languages where nouns are classified as either "masculine", "feminine" or "neuter", natural gender is the state of being either "male person", "female person", or "neither". In languages where nouns are classified as "animate" or "inanimate", the natural genders are the categories "human or animal" and "other". The word "natural" should be understood in a broad sense, here. Natural gender can be the biological Sex of a living being, or the social or personal Gender identity of a person. The two concepts do not always coincide. An often cited example of this is the German word ''Mädchen'', which means "girl", but is treated grammatically as neuter. This is because ''Mädchen'' is the diminutive of ''Maid'' (archaic nowadays), and diminutive suffixes such as ''-chen'' conventionally places nouns in the "neuter" noun class. Another example of a mismatch between gender in language and natural gender is the common habit of referring to ships as "she", in English. Grammatical gender may be assigned arbitrarily to some nouns, without any relation to their meaning. Thus, in Latin and Romance Languages the word ''Sol'' (Sun) is masculine and the word ''Luna'' (Moon) is feminine, but, in German and Germanic Languages in general, the opposite occurs. EXTERNAL LINKS SEE ALSO |
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