gendernumber

Gendernumber is a term used in linguistics to describe the interaction between grammatical gender and grammatical number in a language’s morphology and syntax. It denotes patterns in which the gender feature of nouns, adjectives, determiners, or pronouns conditions or is conditioned by the number feature, yielding systematic forms that reflect both categories. In many languages, gender and number are treated as separate features; analyses that invoke gendernumber examine how agreement paradigms combine these features, often resulting in four or more agreement cells (for example, masculine singular, feminine singular, masculine plural, feminine plural) on adjectives and determiners.

Typological variation is a central focus in gendernumber research. Some languages show transparent gender–number concord, where the form of adjectives or verbs changes with both gender and number. Others exhibit partial interaction, where number triggers gender-specific allomorphy or where gender influences number marking only on certain function words. Some languages have more than two gender categories, or employ agender systems where gender plays a limited or different role in agreement.

Applications of the concept include descriptive grammars, language typology, psycholinguistics, and natural language processing. Studying gendernumber can aid in modeling cross-linguistic agreement patterns, informing language learning and revitalization efforts, and improving multilingual NLP systems that must handle gendered and numbered agreement.

Challenges include cross-linguistic variation in how gender and number interact, varying analytic status of the category across languages, and the presence of languages with nonstandard or fluid gender and number systems. See also grammatical gender, grammatical number, and morphological agreement.