Editing Grammatical gender (section)

=== On pronouns ===
Pronouns may [[agreement (linguistics)|agree]] in gender with the noun or noun phrase to which they refer (their [[antecedent (grammar)|antecedent]]). Sometimes, however, there is no antecedent—the referent of the pronoun is deduced indirectly from the context: this is found with personal pronouns, as well as with indefinite and dummy pronouns.

==== Personal pronouns ====
With personal pronouns, the gender of the pronoun is likely to agree with the ''natural gender'' of the referent. Indeed, in most European languages, personal pronouns are gendered; for example English (the [[English personal pronouns|personal pronouns]] ''he'', ''she'' and ''it'' are used depending on whether the referent is male, female, or inanimate or non-human; this is in spite of the fact that English does not generally have grammatical gender). A parallel example is provided by the object suffixes of verbs in [[Modern Standard Arabic|Arabic]], which correspond to object pronouns, and which also inflect for gender in the [[grammatical person|second person]] (though not in the first):
* "I love you", said to a male: ''{{transliteration|ar|uḥibbuk'''a'''}}'' ({{lang|ar|أُحِبُّكَ}})
* "I love you", said to a female: ''{{transliteration|ar|uḥibbuk'''i'''}}'' ({{lang|ar|أُحِبُّكِ}})

Not all languages have gendered pronouns. In languages that never had grammatical gender, there is normally just one word for "he" and "she", like {{wikt-lang|id|dia}} in [[Malay language|Malay]] and [[Indonesian language|Indonesian]], {{wikt-lang|hu|ő}} in [[Hungarian language|Hungarian]] and {{wikt-lang|tr|o}} in [[Turkish language|Turkish]]. These languages might only have different pronouns and inflections in the [[grammatical person|third person]] to differentiate between people and inanimate objects, but even this distinction is often absent. In written [[Finnish grammar|Finnish]], for example, {{wikt-lang|fi|hän}} is used for "he" and "she" and {{wikt-lang|fi|se}} for "it", but in the colloquial language {{lang|fi|se}} is usually used for "he" and "she" as well.{{crossreference|&nbsp;(For more on these different types of pronoun, see [[Third-person pronoun]].)}}

Issues may arise in languages with gender-specific pronouns in cases when the gender of the referent is unknown or not specified; this is a matter that arises frequently in relation to [[gender-neutral language]], as with English usage of [[Singular they|Singular ''they'']].

In some cases, the gender of a pronoun is not marked in the form of the pronoun itself, but is marked on other words by way of agreement. Thus the French word for 'I' is {{wikt-lang|fr|je}}, regardless of who is speaking; but this word becomes feminine or masculine depending on the sex of the speaker, as may be reflected through adjective agreement: {{lang|fr|je suis fort'''e'''}} ('I am strong', spoken/written by a female); {{lang|fr|je suis fort}} (the same but by a male).

In [[null-subject language]]s (and in some [[Ellipsis (grammar)|elliptical]] expressions in other languages), such agreement may take place even though the pronoun does not in fact appear. For example, in [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]]:
* '[I am] very grateful', said/written by a male: {{lang|pt|muito obrigad'''o'''}}
* the same, by a female: {{lang|pt|muito obrigad'''a'''}}
The two sentences above mean literally 'much obliged'; the adjective agrees with the natural gender of the speaker, that is, with the gender of the first person pronoun which does not appear explicitly here.

==== Indefinite and dummy pronouns ====
{{anchor|Indefinite pronouns|Dummy pronouns}}
A [[dummy pronoun]] is a type of pronoun used when a particular verb argument (such as the [[subject (grammar)|subject]]) is nonexistent, but when a reference to the argument is nevertheless syntactically required. They occur mostly in non-[[pro-drop language]]s, such as English (because in pro-drop languages the position of the argument can be left empty). Examples in English are the uses of ''it'' in "It's raining" and "It's nice to relax."

When a language has gendered pronouns, the use of a particular word as a dummy pronoun may involve the selection of a particular gender, even though there is no noun to agree with. In languages with a neuter gender, a neuter pronoun is usually used, as in German {{lang|de|es regnet}} ("it rains, it's raining"), where {{wikt-lang|de|es}} is the neuter third person singular pronoun. (English behaves similarly, because the word ''it'' comes from the [[Old English]] neuter gender.) In languages with only masculine and feminine genders, the dummy pronoun may be the masculine third person singular, as in the French for "it's raining": {{lang|fr|il pleut}} (where {{wikt-lang|fr|il}} means "he", or "it" when referring to masculine nouns); although some languages use the feminine, as in the equivalent [[Welsh language|Welsh]] sentence: {{lang|cy|mae hi'n bwrw glaw}} (where the dummy pronoun is {{wikt-lang|cy|hi}}, which means "she", or "it" when referring to feminine nouns).

A similar, apparently arbitrary gender assignment may need to be made in the case of [[indefinite pronoun]]s, where the referent is generally unknown. In this case the question is usually not which pronoun to use, but which gender to assign a given pronoun to (for such purposes as adjective agreement). For example, the French pronouns {{wikt-lang|fr|quelqu'un}} ("someone"), {{wikt-lang|fr|personne}} ("no-one") and {{wikt-lang|fr|quelque chose}} ("something") are all treated as masculine—this is in spite of the fact that the last two correspond to feminine nouns ({{lang|fr|personne}} meaning "person", and {{wikt-lang|fr|chose}} meaning "thing").<ref>{{cite book |first=Monique |last=L'Huillier |title=Advanced French Grammar |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |date=1999 |pages=401}}</ref> {{crossreference|(For other situations in which such a "default" gender assignment may be required, see [[#Contextual determination of gender|below]].)|printworthy=y}}