Natural gender - Definition and Overview

In linguistics, natural gender refers to biological sex, i.e., the state of being male or female, as opposed to grammatical gender, a system where biological sex is not a primary factor.

In a language that primarily uses natural gender, such as English, the grammatical gender of a word will normally agree with its referent's natural gender. Things that are neither male nor female are given a separate gender called inanimate or neuter.

Most languages with masculine and feminine genders use natural gender to some extent. A common exception is in diminutive nouns, which are often neuter. In the German language, for instance, Mädchen ("girl") has neuter grammatical gender though its referent's natural gender is feminine.

Languages that do not exclusively rely on natural gender may classify inanimates as feminine or masculine as well as neuter. This may be done arbitrarily, as in French, where the moon (la lune) is classified as feminine, or it may be done based on formal grounds, as in Latin where words with the suffix -tas, -tatis are classified as feminine. Sometimes natural gender will override formal assignment of grammatical gender: in Latin, for example, nauta ("sailor") is masculine, and nurus ("daughter-in-law") is feminine, even though the endings -a and -us are normally associated with the opposite gender.

See also

• Grammatical gender