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A few nouns are said to be of "ambiguous" gender, meaning that they are sometimes treated as masculine and sometimes as feminine. [4] Additionally, the terms "common gender" and "epicene gender" are used to classify ways in which grammatical gender interacts (or not) with "natural gender" (the gender identity of a person, or the sex of an animal).
The gender of some nouns in Spanish are subject to variation. It is rare that the same speakers use these nouns in both genders without difference in meaning; that is, speakers do not just pick a form at random, but rather, something about the speaker or the intended meaning leads one gender or the other to be preferred in a particular context ...
Activists against sexism in language are also concerned about words whose feminine form has a different (usually less prestigious) meaning: An ambiguous case is "secretary": a secretaria is an attendant for her boss or a typist, usually female, while a secretario is a high-rank position—as in secretario general del partido comunista, "secretary general of the communist party"—usually held ...
Many Australian languages have a system of gender superclassing in which membership in one gender can mean membership in another. [15] Worrorra: Masculine, feminine, terrestrial, celestial, and collective. [16] Halegannada: Originally had 9 gender pronouns but only 3 exist in present-day Kannada. Zande: Masculine, feminine, animate, and inanimate.
the. MASC. SG abuelo grandfather el abuelo the.MASC.SG grandfather "the grandfather" Feminine la the. FEM. SG abuela grandmother la abuela the.FEM.SG grandmother "the grandmother" Example of grammatical gender in Spanish "Grammatical" gender Number Phrase Masculine Singular el the. MASC. SG plato dish el plato the.MASC.SG dish "the dish" Plural los the. MASC. PL platos dishes los platos the ...
These languages therefore largely lack a third, neutral option aside from the gender-specific words for "man" and "woman". Spanish ser humano, Portuguese ser humano and French être humain are used to say "human being". In Romanian, however, the cognate om retains its original meaning of "any human person", as opposed to the gender-specific ...
Spanish is a diasporic language which also experiences diachronic variation. While Spanish is said to generally have flexible or "free" word order, others such as Pountain assert that the syntax is heavily influenced by topic and comment identification. [5]
The same word can refer to either masculine or feminine signified concept, while retaining its own, either masculine or feminine, grammatical gender. For example, Classical Greek λαγώς ( lagṓs ) 'hare' is masculine, but can refer to male and female hares (he-hares and she-hares), and ἀλώπηξ ( alṓpēks ) 'fox' is feminine, but ...