Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Spanish nouns belong to either the masculine or the feminine grammatical gender. [1] [2] [3] Gender, in this case, refers to a grammatical system and is not necessarily connected with biological sex or gender. [2] For example, la mesa 'table' is feminine despite there being
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 ...
Nouns seem to possess a well defined but covert system of grammatical gender. We may call a noun masculine, feminine or neuter depending on the pronouns which it selects in the singular. Mass or non-count nouns (such as frost, fog, water, love) are called neuter because they select the pronoun it. Count nouns divide into masculine and feminine.
However the words for inanimate objects are commonly masculine (e.g. der Tisch, the table) or feminine (die Armbanduhr, the watch), and grammatical gender can diverge from biological sex; for instance the feminine noun [die] Person refers to a person of either sex, and the neuter noun [das] Mädchen means "the girl". [107]
Masculine, feminine and neuter nouns often have their own special nominative singular endings. For instance, many masculine nouns end in -or ( amor, amōris , 'love'). Many feminine nouns end in -īx ( phoenīx, phoenīcis , 'phoenix'), and many neuter nouns end in -us with an r stem in the oblique cases ( onus, oneris 'burden'; tempus ...
There are also semantic, morphological and phonological clues to help determine a noun's gender, e.g. llaeth "milk" is masculine as are all liquids, priodas "wedding" is feminine because it ends in the suffix-as, and theatr "theatre" is feminine because the stressed vowel is an e. Many everyday nouns, however, possess no such clues.
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. Vos amis sont arrivés — Ils étaient en avance.
Animals are triple-gender nouns, being able to take masculine, feminine and neuter pronouns. [11] While the vast majority of nouns in English do not carry gender, there remain some gendered nouns (e.g. ewe, sow, rooster) and derivational affixes (e.g. widower, waitress) that denote gender. [12]