Editing Noun class (section)

== Notion ==
{{unreferenced section|date=October 2019}}
There are three main ways by which natural languages categorize nouns into noun classes:
* according to similarities in their meaning (semantic criterion);
* by grouping them with other nouns that have similar form (morphology);
* through an arbitrary convention.
Usually, a combination of the three types of criteria is used, though one is more prevalent.

Noun classes form a system of [[agreement (linguistics)|grammatical agreement]]. A noun in a given class may require:
* agreement [[affix]]es on adjectives, pronouns, numerals, etc. in the same noun phrase,
* agreement affixes on the verb,
* a special form of pronoun to replace the noun,
* an affix on the noun,
* a class-specific word in the noun phrase.

Modern English expresses noun classes through the third person singular personal pronouns ''he'' (male person), ''she'' (female person), and ''it'' (object, abstraction, or animal), and their other inflected forms. [[countable noun|Countable]] and uncountable nouns are distinguished by the choice of ''many''/''much''. The choice between the relative pronoun ''who'' (persons) and ''which'' (non-persons) may also be considered a form of agreement with a semantic noun class. A few nouns also exhibit vestigial noun classes, such as ''stewardess'', where the suffix ''-ess'' added to ''steward'' denotes a female person. This type of noun affixation is not very frequent in [[English language|English]], but quite common in languages which have the true [[grammatical gender]], including most of the [[Indo-European languages|Indo-European]] family, to which English belongs.

In languages without inflectional noun classes, nouns may still be extensively categorized by independent particles called [[noun classifier]]s.

=== Common criteria for noun classes ===<!--linked from [[List of glossing abbreviations]]-->

Common criteria that define noun classes include:

* [[animacy|animate vs. inanimate]] (as in [[Ojibwe language|Ojibwe]])
* rational vs. non-rational (as in [[Tamil language|Tamil]])
* human vs. non-human
* human vs. animal (zoic) vs. inanimate
* male vs. other
* male human vs. other (as in [[Polish language|Polish]] in [[masculine virile]]<ref>{{cite web |title=Slavic Languages |url=http://www.lsa.umich.edu/slavic/dept/WebBasedLanguage/Polish/Grammar/NominativePlural/MascVPL/Index.htm |publisher= |access-date=2022-06-22 |archive-date=2016-10-09 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161009104628/http://www.lsa.umich.edu/slavic/dept/webbasedlanguage/Polish/Grammar/NominativePlural/MascVPL/Index.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref>)
* masculine vs. feminine
* masculine vs. feminine vs. neuter
* common vs. neuter
* strong vs. weak
* augmentative vs. diminutive
* [[Count noun|countable]] vs. [[Mass noun|uncountable]]