Abstract
Gender is a feature of special interest because it provides a dramatic demonstration of just how different languages can be. For many of the Indo-European languages it is an important part of the grammar that is realized in a high proportion of utterances. In most Dagestanian languages, such as Tsakhur or Archi, it is still more salient: it suffuses the syntax and morphology, appearing on some unlikely agreement targets. In almost all the languages of the Austronesian family, it is simply missing. This article first examines the definitions of gender to ensure that we are comparing like with like. There has been careful research to do this, and it will become clear that within the languages that do have gender there is a considerable variety of systems. This is particularly apparent in the ways in which speakers assign nouns to genders. Gender systems may have sex as a component, as in languages with masculine and feminine genders; but, equally, sex may be irrelevant, as in the Algonquian languages, where the distinction is between animate and inanimate. This article outlines the distribution of gender in the world's languages, and reports on recent developments in the field.