Editing Grammatical gender (section)

== Gender shifts ==
It is possible for a noun to have more than one gender.<ref name="hockett" /><ref name="dixon" /><ref name="sil" /> Such gender shifts are sometimes correlated with meaning shifts, and sometimes yield doublets with no difference in meaning. Moreover, gender shifts sometimes crosscuts number contrasts, such that the singular form of a noun has one gender, and plural form of the noun has a different gender.

=== Meaningful ===
Gender shift may be associated with a difference in the sex of the referent, as with nouns such as {{lang|es|comunista}} in Spanish, which may be either masculine or feminine, depending on whether it refers to a male or a female. It may also correspond to some other difference in the meaning of the word. For example, the German word {{lang|de|See}} meaning "lake" is masculine, whereas the identical word meaning "sea" is feminine. The meanings of the Norwegian noun {{lang|no|ting}} have diverged further: masculine {{lang|no|en ting}} is "a thing", whereas neuter {{lang|no|et ting}} is "an assembly". (The parliament is the {{lang|no|Storting}}, "the Great {{lang|no|Ting}}"; the other {{lang|no|ting}}s like {{lang|no|Borgarting}} are the regional courts.)

It is a matter of analysis how to draw the line between a single [[polysemy|polysemous]] word with multiple genders and a set of [[homonym]]s with one gender each. For example, Bulgarian has a pair of homonyms {{lang|bg|пръст}} ({{lang|bg|prəst}}) which are etymologically unrelated. One is masculine and means "finger"; the other is feminine and means "soil".

=== Meaningless ===
In other cases, a word may be usable in multiple genders indifferently. For example, in [[Bulgarian language|Bulgarian]] the word {{lang|bg|пу̀стош}}, ({{transliteration|bg|pustosh}}, "wilderness") may be either masculine (definite form {{lang|bg|пу̀стоша}}, {{transliteration|bg|pustoshə}}) or feminine (definite form {{lang|bg|пустошта̀}}, {{transliteration|bg|pustoshta}}) without any change in meaning and no preference in usage.

In Norwegian, many nouns can be either feminine or masculine according to the dialect, level of formality or whim of the speaker/writer. Even the two written forms of the language have many nouns whose gender is optional. Choosing the masculine gender will often seem more formal than using the feminine.{{Citation needed|date=July 2018}} This might be because before the creation of [[Norwegian Nynorsk]] and [[Norwegian Bokmål]] in the late 19th century, Norwegians wrote in Danish, which has lost the feminine gender, thus usage of the masculine gender (corresponding exactly to Danish common gender in conjugation in Norwegian Bokmål) is more formal sounding to modern Norwegians.{{Citation needed|date=July 2018}}

The word for "sun" can be another example. One might decline it masculine: {{lang|no|En sol, solen, soler, solene}}, or feminine: {{lang|no|Ei sol, sola, soler, solene}}, in [[Norwegian Bokmål]]. The same goes for a lot of common words like {{lang|no|bok}} (book), {{lang|no|dukke}} (doll), {{lang|no|bøtte}} (bucket) and so forth. Many of the words where it is possible to choose gender are inanimate objects that one might suspect would be conjugated with the neuter gender. Nouns conjugated with the neuter gender cannot normally be conjugated as feminine or masculine in Norwegian. There is also a slight tendency towards using the masculine indefinite article even when choosing the feminine conjugation of a noun in many eastern Norwegian dialects. For instance, the word for "girl" is declined: {{lang|no|En jente, jenta, jenter, jentene}}.

=== Associated with number contrasts===
Sometimes a noun's gender can change between its plural and singular forms, as with the French words {{lang|fr|amour}} ("love"), {{lang|fr|délice}} ("delight") and {{lang|fr|orgue}} ("organ" as musical instrument), all of which are masculine in the singular but feminine in the plural. These anomalies may have a historical explanation ({{lang|fr|amour}} used to be feminine in the singular too) or result from slightly different notions ({{lang|fr|orgue}} in the singular is usually a [[barrel organ]], whereas the plural {{lang|fr|orgues}} usually refers to the collection of columns in a [[church organ]]){{disputed inline|reason="It's actually a remnant of the neutral declension in Latin"|date=December 2013}}. Further examples are the Italian words {{lang|it|uovo}} ("egg") and {{lang|it|braccio}} ("arm"). These are masculine in the singular, but form the irregular plurals {{lang|it|uova}} and {{lang|it|braccia}}, which have the endings of the feminine singular, but have feminine plural agreement. (This is related to the forms of the [[Latin declension|second declension]] Latin neuter nouns from which they derive: {{lang|la|ovum}} and {{lang|it|bracchium}}, with nominative plurals {{lang|la|ova}} and {{lang|la|bracchia}}.) In other cases, the anomaly can be explained by the form of the noun, as is the case in [[Scottish Gaelic]]. Masculine nouns which form their plural by [[Palatalization (phonetics)|palatalization]] of their final consonant can change gender in their plural form, as a palatalized final consonant is often a marker of a feminine noun, e.g. {{lang|gd|balach beag}} ("small boy"), but {{lang|gd|balaich bheaga}} ("small boys"), with the adjective showing agreement for both feminine gender ([[lenition]] of initial consonant) and plural number (suffixed {{lang|gd|-a}}).