is the culturally specific set of characteristics that identify the social behaviour of women and men, the relationship between them and the way it is socially constructed Gender is an analytical tool for understanding social processes
2 types of gender are distinguished in linguistics --- natural gender, where items refer to the sex of real world entities, and grammatical gender, which has nothing to do with sex, but which signals grammatical relationships between words in a sentence and which is shown e g by the form of the article or the noun
a grammatical category in inflected languages governing the agreement between nouns and pronouns and adjectives; in some languages it is quite arbitrary but in Indo-European languages it is usually based on sex or animateness
One of the features of a noun phrase In English, gender is only marked in third-person singular pronouns and associated words The possible values of the gender feature are masculine, feminine, and neuter typemasculinefeminineneuterexample pronoun (nominative)hesheithe hit the ball pronoun (accusative)himheritFrank hit him pronoun(possessive adjective)hisheritsFrank hit his arm pronoun(possessive)hishersitsThe ball is his pronoun(reflexive)himselfherselfitselfFrank hurt himself
differences between men and women, suggesting but not necessitating reference to sex
a quality attached to a noun or pronoun that indicates an abstract category of the individuals are being referred to Most English nouns are neuter, and English has singular pronouns that are masculine, feminine, and neuter ("he", "she", and "it", respectively) All Welsh nouns are either masculine or feminine
{i} sex of a person or animal; (Grammar) system in some languages in which nouns are separated into two or more groups (i.e. masculine, female, neuter); such a group of nouns; state of being male or female in regard to social or cultural differences