linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...

, polarity of gender is when a

lexical item In lexicography, a lexical item is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of words (catena) that forms the basic elements of a language's lexicon (≈ vocabulary). Examples are ''cat'', ''traffic light'', ''take care of'', ''by the way' ...

takes the opposite

grammatical gender In linguistics, grammatical gender system is a specific form of noun class system, where nouns are assigned with gender categories that are often not related to their real-world qualities. In languages with grammatical gender, most or all noun ...

than expected. The phenomenon is widespread in

Afroasiatic languages The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic ...

such as Semitic and

Cushitic The Cushitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken primarily in the Horn of Africa, with minorities speaking Cushitic languages to the north in Egypt and the Sudan, and to the south in Kenya and Tanzania. As o ...

tongues. For example, in

Somali Somali may refer to: Horn of Africa * Somalis, an inhabitant or ethnicity associated with Greater Somali Region ** Proto-Somali, the ancestors of modern Somalis ** Somali culture ** Somali cuisine ** Somali language, a Cushitic language ** Somali ...

, which is a

language, plural nouns usually take the opposite gender of their singular forms.

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, a

Semitic language The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigrant ...

, had a consistent polarity-of-gender agreement between nouns and numerals. The phenomenon is sometimes referred to as "chiastic concord" or "reverse agreement". For example, in the Hebrew

noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...

''‘éser banót'', which means "ten girls", the numeral (ten) is masculine whereas the noun (girls) is feminine. Similarly, in the Hebrew noun phrase ''‘asar-á baním'', which means "ten boys", the numeral (ten) is feminine whereas the noun (boys) is masculine. In the latter, the feminine suffix ''-a'' () is added to the numeral עשר (ten) that modifies the masculine noun (boys). However, according to

Ghil'ad Zuckermann Ghil'ad Zuckermann ( he, גלעד צוקרמן, ; ) is an Israeli-born language revivalist and linguist who works in contact linguistics, lexicology and the study of language, culture and identity. Zuckermann is Professor of Linguistics and Ch ...

, common usage in

modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...

is different in this regard. Following

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

(where there is no difference between a numeral modifying a masculine noun and a numeral modifying a feminine one), in most Israeli idiolects, sociolects and dialects, the numeral-noun agreement system is much simpler, and does ''not'' follow polarity of gender. In common usage (as opposed to the prescribed form by the

Academy of the Hebrew Language The Academy of the Hebrew Language ( he, הָאָקָדֶמְיָה לַלָּשׁוֹן הָעִבְרִית, ''ha-akademyah la-lashon ha-ivrit'') was established by the Israeli government in 1953 as the "supreme institution for scholarship on t ...

), the expressions ''éser banót'' ("ten girls"), and ''éser baním'' ("ten boys"), are both commonly used and grammatical. However, argues Zuckermann, due to massive puristic pressure, Israelis end up with hypercorrect forms such as ''shlósh-et ha-dód-ot'' ("the three aunts"), as opposed to the puristic ''shlósh ha-dod-ót''. The phenomenon happens in Portuguese with the word ''avós'' (grandparents).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Polarity of gender Linguistic morphology