Grammar, Semantics, and Gender. What German Mädchen ‘girl’ and Tod ‘death’ (Do Not) Tell Us About Grammatical Gender

Like every noun in German, the German words Tod ‘death’ and Mädchen‘girl’ have a grammatical gender: masculine and neuter. Following a useful tradition in German research, we will use the Latin terms sexus and genus to distinguish natural from grammatical gender. In contemporary public discourse, grammatical gender (genus) and the category for the so-called ‘natural’ or ‘biological’ gender (sexus) are often equated. Accordingly, Tod ‘death’ might be said to possess a masculine gender in German, while Mädchen ‘girl’ would be ‘sexless’ (Latinne-utrum ‘neither’). In other languages, however, such as French, the words for ‘death’ (mort) and ‘girl’ (fille) are feminine. English does not have grammatical gender, but it does assign natural gender to proper names and relational nouns (such as mother and brother). For this reason, the word for ‘girl’ can be used with the feminine personal pronoun (The girl is coming. She is smiling), as is also possible in German (Das Mädchen kommt. Sie lächelt). Based on present-day German nominalisation patterns, it can be seen that genus is not based on sexus, but on the grammatical category of number instead. The femininegender is originally a category for collectivity, while the masculinedenotes individuativity (count semantics). The basic collectivesemantics of the feminine are also reflected in the etymology of the motion suffix -in. Conversely, the confusion between genus and sexusis based on the well-known principle of personification. The article explores the relationship between genus and sexus in the context of various linguistic theories and cultural-historical perspectives on language.