Noun class

Noun class refers to a system which categorises the nouns of a language into different groups. Nouns may be assigned to a group according to some semantic feature, i.e. they mean similar things; according to pronunciation; or arbitrarily. For example, the French language divides nouns into two classes according to an extensive set of rules relating to the form of each noun: for example, nouns ending -age almost always belong to one class, perhaps misleadingly named 'masculine'.

While noun classes originate in various distinctions found in the natural world, e.g. animacy (living and non-living) and gender, they are not typically filled according to whether things in the speakers' environment are obviously male, female, living or non-living, and so on. This means that while, for example, the noun man will usually be found in a class that includes recognisably 'male' things, or is associated with maleness in some way, other nouns will not be placed in their categories according to such basic associations. Looking at French again, while it is true that homme 'man' is assigned to the 'masculine' class, it is not the case that other masculine nouns such as lit are strongly associated with maleness. Often categorisation is the opposite of what is expected; for example, sein 'breast' is also masculine in French.

Typically, European languages have two or three noun classes, which are usually called 'genders' and referred to as 'masculine', 'feminine' and 'neuter'. As these words are related to the concepts of 'male' and 'female', such terminology may misleadingly imply that languages can only have up to three genders, and that each noun is assigned to a 'gender' according to how 'male' or 'female' it seems to be. In fact, many languages have far more than three classes, and often assign nouns quite specifically and in ways that reveal how the mind or cultures categorise the world. For example, the four-class Australian Aboriginal language Dyirbal famously assigns 'women', 'fire' and 'dangerous things' to a single noun class.

See also

• Noun
• Grammar
• Linguistics
• Grammatical number
• Grammatical case