Grammatical gender

In linguistics, grammatical gender refers to the practice of grouping nouns into the gendered classes of masculine and feminine. Some languages also use a third class known as the neuter gender and a fourth class known as the common gender, while others have no gender system at all. Although gendered nouns are found in many languages, the system has very limited applications in modern English. Old English, which dates from about 500 CE to 1150 CE, featured masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns, but grammatical gender fell out of use as English evolved into its current form.

Languages that use grammatical gender mark various classes with gendered pronouns, indefinite articles, and definite articles. For example, in French, the indefinite articles un (masculine) and une (feminine) correspond to the English a or an, while the definite articles le (masculine) and la (feminine) correspond to the English the. Neutral nouns, which are neither masculine nor feminine, are said to belong to the neuter class. Examples of languages that have all three noun forms (masculine, feminine, and neuter) include Romanian and Icelandic, as well as many Slavic tongues, such as Bulgarian, Croatian, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian.

Background

Linguists have forwarded numerous theories on the origins of grammatical gender. Historically, gendered nouns were thought to have stemmed from the tendency of ancient human cultures to personify objects. Rather than being considered inanimate, objects were thought to be sentient in their own right and were thus imbued with characteristics deemed to reflect their distinct personalities. Classifying objects as masculine and feminine became a convenient and easily understandable way to express the perceived essence of a given object.

Other theories emerged during the nineteenth century, when figures including the German linguist Karl Brugmann and the renowned German mythologist and scholar Jacob Grimm proposed alternate ways of understanding the sources and evolution of grammatical gender. For Brugmann, grammatical gender was the result of a much more complex brand of linguistic development. His theory forwarded the idea that nouns came to be classified as masculine or feminine through the changing usage patterns of suffixes that were originally reserved for collective nouns and abstract nouns. Collective nouns refer to a group of things as a whole, such as a flock of birds, while abstract nouns refer to things that cannot be perceived by the senses, such as faith, culture, or education. In essence, Brugmann believed that over time, these suffixes increasingly came to be attached to other noun forms, including animate nouns that describe living things. As this happened, certain suffixes came to be reserved exclusively for male beings, while others referred specifically to female beings. This classification system then spread into all other noun forms, resulting in the development of gendered word groups.

Grimm's theory developed along similar lines, but differed in that he believed that the attachment of suffixes to animate nouns did not originally have anything to do with the sex of the being in question. Rather, Grimm thought that these sex associations developed later on, resulting in a masculine/feminine classification system that came to include all noun forms.

Overview

The three most commonly defined forms of grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter) tend to exist within languages in one of three ways. First, a language can have most or all of its nouns take the neuter form, as is the case with modern English. Alternately, a language can have most or all of its nouns fall into the masculine and feminine categories, as is the case with most of the Romance languages, including French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian. A third possibility sees a language contain both masculine and feminine nouns as well as neuter nouns, which occurs in many Slavic tongues. While relatively rare, it is also possible for a language to have its nouns belong to the neuter class, and to one or the other of the masculine or feminine class.

Danish and Swedish offer examples of one other possible permutation: neuter nouns that coexist with common nouns. In these languages, common nouns were once classified as either masculine or feminine, but have since merged to form a single (common) class that uses different pronouns and articles than neuter nouns.

In English, gendered nouns fell out of widespread use around 1150 CE, a time when Old English came under the increasing influence of the Norse tongues spoken by Viking settlers in the British Isles. Researchers note that such periods of accelerated cross-language contact tend to result in rapid linguistic changes. According to Anne Curzan, author of Gender Shifts in the History of English, Old English and Norse shared Germanic origins, giving them similar word roots. However, the two tongues often had different inflections, or word modifications that denote slight shifts in meaning, aspect, or verb tense. As speakers of Old English and Norse continued to intermingle, these differing inflections were simplified, eventually standardizing into the gender-neutral forms of modern English.

Today, gendered nouns are very rare in English, with the differing forms of fiancé (masculine) and fiancée (feminine) providing one of few accessible examples. According to the conventions of English grammar, articles always remain neutral when they are attached to such nouns (i.e., the serves as the definite article for both fiancé and fiancée). However, the pronoun he is always associated with fiancé, while the pronoun she is always associated with fiancée. Additional examples of gendered English nouns include warlock and landlord (masculine), which correspond to witch and landlady (feminine).

In the twenty-first century, some linguistic studies have focused on the gendered classifications of words as part of a broader inquiry into culturally ingrained expressions of sexism and gender inequality. For example, a 2009 study conducted at the Rhode Island School of Design divided students into two groups, one of which read passages written in noun-neutral English, while the other read passages written in a language with masculine and feminine noun classes. Researchers claimed that students who read passages with masculine and feminine nouns displayed heightened levels of sexist attitudes in subsequent tests compared to students who read passages in English. These findings were supported by a 2018 study that found gendered language may play a role in limiting women's opportunities. The researchers examined the grammatical gender structure of 4,000 languages and determined that 38 percent of the world's population spoke a gendered language. In those countries, women experienced lower labor market participation.

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