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French personal pronouns (analogous to English I, you, he/she, we, and they) reflect the person and number of their referent, and in the case of the third person, its gender as well (much like the English distinction between him and her, except that French lacks an inanimate third person pronoun it or a gender neutral they and thus draws this distinction among all third person nouns, singular ...
This leads to sentences such as (5a) in English, and (6a) in French. Example of gender-neutral masculine: English (5) a. If anybody comes, tell him. masculine him used to refer to a person of unknown sex b. *If anybody comes, tell her. feminine her is not used to refer to a person of unknown sex Example of collective masculine: French (6) a.
Polish: Masculine personal, Masculine animate, Masculine inanimate, Feminine, Neuter (traditionally, only masculine, feminine and neuter genders are recognized). Pama–Nyungan languages including Dyirbal and other Australian languages have gender systems such as: Masculine, feminine (see Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things), vegetable and neuter ...
The masculine singular, an adjective's basic form, is listed in dictionaries. The feminine singular is normally formed by adding -e to the basic form. This -e is silent, which makes many masculine and feminine forms homophonous (cf. civil > civile 'civil', both pronounced /sivil/).
Grammatical gender in French consists of two genders: the masculine and the feminine. To make words or phrases gender-inclusive, French-speakers use two methods: Orthographic solutions strive to include both the masculine and feminine endings in the word.
Furthermore, some see evidence of the intentional preference of the masculine over the feminine. It has been argued that 17th-century grammaticians who wanted to assert male dominance worked to suppress the feminine forms of certain professions, leading to the modern-day rule that prefers the masculine over the feminine in the French language. [4]
A very small number of nouns in some languages can be either masculine or feminine. [53] [54] When referring to these mixed-gender nouns, a decision has to be made, based on factors such as meaning, dialect or sometimes even personal preference, whether to use a masculine or feminine pronoun. There are no neutral or mixed-gender singular third ...
In French, articles and determiners are required on almost every common noun, much more so than in English. They are inflected to agree in gender (masculine or feminine) and number (singular or plural) with the noun they determine, though most have only one plural form (for masculine and feminine). Many also often change pronunciation when the ...