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In linguistics, a noun class is a particular category of nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional. Some authors use the term "grammatical gender" as a synonym of "noun class", but others use different definitions for each (see below). Noun classes should not be confused with noun classifiers. == Notion == In general, 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), or * 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 grammatical agreement. The fact that a noun belongs to a given class may imply the presence of: * agreement affixes on adjectives, pronouns, numerals etc. which are noun phrase constituents, * agreement affixes on the verb, * a special form of a pronoun which replaces the noun, * an affix on the noun, * a class-specific word in the noun phrase (or in some types of noun phrases). 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. The choice between the relative pronoun ''who'' (persons) and ''which'' (non-persons) may also be considered a way of categorizing nouns into noun classes. 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, but quite common in languages which have the true grammatical gender, including most of the Indo-European family, to which English belongs. When noun class is expressed on other parts of speech, besides nouns and pronouns, the language is said to have grammatical gender. In languages without inflectional noun classes, nouns may still be extensively categorized by independent particles called noun classifiers. === Common criteria for noun classes === Common criteria that define noun classes include: * animate vs. inanimate (as in Ojibwe) * rational vs. non-rational (as in Tamil) * human vs. non-human * human vs. animal vs. inanimate (as in Polish in masculine) * male vs. other * male human vs. other * masculine vs. feminine * masculine vs. feminine vs. neuter * common vs. neuter * strong vs. weak * augmentative vs. diminutive * countable vs. uncountable See Swahili for the semantic motivations for an elaborate noun-class system. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Noun class」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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