gendercase

Gendercase is a term occasionally used in linguistics to describe the interaction between grammatical gender and grammatical case in languages that mark both on nouns, adjectives, determiners, or pronouns. The concept focuses on how the gender of a noun influences the form of related words as the case of the noun changes.

In languages with both features, the gender of a noun can affect the form of determiners, adjectives, and sometimes pronouns across different cases. A common illustration is German: in the nominative singular masculine, you have der gute Mann, while in the accusative singular masculine you have den guten Mann. Here both the article and the adjective endings reflect gender and case, demonstrating concord within the phrase.

Across languages, patterns vary. Some languages maintain a three- or more gender system and a rich case system with extensive agreement on determiners and adjectives; others have reduced or no gender marking on adjectives, or have different ways of aligning gender with case. The degree and nature of concord can differ significantly from one language to another.

The term gendercase is not a standard, widely used label in linguistic grammars. More common is discussion of the interaction of grammatical gender and case, or of concord and agreement between nouns, adjectives, and articles. The concept remains relevant to morphosyntax research, language description, and applications in language teaching and natural language processing, where accurate gender and case marking supports parsing and generation.