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"Natural" gender can be masculine or feminine, [23] while "grammatical" gender can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. This third, or "neuter" gender 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 ...
In principle, animals are triple-gender nouns, being able to take masculine, feminine and neuter pronouns. However, animals viewed as less important to humans, also known as ‘lower animals’, are generally referred to using it; higher (domestic) animals may more often be referred to using he and she, when their sex is known. [14]
Nouns referring to people and animals of known sex are generally referred to by nouns with the equivalent gender. Thus Mann (meaning man) is masculine and is associated with a masculine definite article to give der Mann, while Frau (meaning woman) is feminine and is associated with a feminine definite article to give die Frau.
Some chromosomal sex determination systems in animals A sex-determination system is a biological system that determines the development of sexual characteristics in an organism . [ 1 ] Most organisms that create their offspring using sexual reproduction have two common sexes, males and females , and in other species, there are hermaphrodites ...
For people and animals with specified gender, the masculine or feminine pronouns are used, but the nouns still take either neutral or common articles. There is no gender distinction in the plural. In Swedish, the word hen was introduced generally in the 2000s as a complement to the gender-specific hon ("she") and han ("he").
Sexual dimorphism in immune function is a common pattern in vertebrates and also in a number of invertebrates. Most often, females are more 'immunocompetent' than males. This trait is not consistent among all animals, but differs depending on taxonomy, with the most female-biased immune systems being found in insects. [129]
In the English language, many animals have different names depending on whether they are male, female, young, domesticated, or in groups. The best-known source of many English words used for collective groupings of animals is The Book of Saint Albans , an essay on hunting published in 1486 and attributed to Juliana Berners . [ 1 ]
Intersex is a general term for an organism that has sex characteristics that are between male and female. [1] It typically applies to a minority of members of gonochoric animal species such as mammals (as opposed to hermaphroditic species in which the majority of members can have both male and female sex characteristics). [2]