Editing Grammatical gender (section)

====  As noun inflection ====
Grammatical gender manifests itself when words related to a noun like [[determiner]]s, [[pronoun]]s or [[adjective]]s change their form (''[[inflect]]'') according to the gender of noun they refer to (''agreement''). The [[parts of speech]] affected by gender agreement, the circumstances in which it occurs, and the way words are marked for gender vary between languages. Gender inflection may interact with other grammatical categories like [[grammatical number|number]] or [[grammatical case|case]]. In some languages the [[declension]] pattern followed by the noun itself will be different for different genders.

The gender of a noun may affect the modifications that the noun itself undergoes, particularly the way in which the noun [[inflection|inflects]] for [[grammatical number|number]] and [[grammatical case|case]]. For example, a language like [[Latin]], [[German language|German]] or [[Russian language|Russian]] has a number of different declension patterns, and which pattern a particular noun follows may be highly correlated with its gender.{{crossreference|&nbsp;(For some instances of this, see [[Latin declension]].)}} A concrete example is provided by the German word {{wikt-lang|de|See}}, which has two possible genders: when it is masculine (meaning "lake") its [[genitive]] singular form is {{lang|de|Sees}}, but when it is feminine (meaning "sea"), the genitive is {{lang|de|See}}, because feminine nouns do not take the genitive ''-s''.

Gender is sometimes reflected in other ways. In [[Welsh language|Welsh]], gender marking is mostly lost on nouns; however, Welsh has [[consonant mutation#Celtic languages|initial mutation]], where the first consonant of a word changes into another in certain conditions. Gender is one of the factors that can cause one form of mutation (soft mutation). For instance, the word {{wikt-lang|cy|merch}} "girl" changes into ''ferch'' after the [[definite article]]. This only occurs with feminine singular nouns: {{wikt-lang|cy|mab}} "son" remains unchanged. Adjectives are affected by gender in a similar way.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/learnwelsh/pdf/welshgrammar_mutations.pdf |title=Y Treigladau – The Mutations |publisher=[[BBC]] |work=Learn Welsh |date=2002 |access-date=15 March 2014 |pages=1–2}}</ref>

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Soft initial mutation caused by gender in Welsh
|-
! align=left |
! scope="col" colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" | Default
! scope="col" colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" | After definite article
! scope="col" colspan="2" style="text-align:center;" | With adjective
|-
! scope="row" | Masculine singular
| {{lang|cy|mab}} || "son" || ''y'' {{lang|cy|mab}} || "the son" || {{lang|cy|y mab mawr}} || "the big son"
|-
! scope="row" | Feminine singular
| {{lang|cy|merch}} || "girl" || {{lang|cy|y '''f'''erch}} || "the girl" || {{lang|cy|y '''f'''erch '''f'''awr}} ||"the big girl"
|}

Additionally, in many languages, gender is often closely correlated with the basic unmodified form ([[lemma (morphology)|lemma]]) of the noun, and sometimes a noun can be modified to produce (for example) masculine and feminine words of similar meaning. {{crossreference|(See [[#Form-based morphological criteria|below]].)|printworthy=y}}