Terms for "natural gender" and "grammatical gender"
This post is partly inspired by previous posts, such as this one, on non-existence of grammatical gender in English. My question is mainly about what "natural gender" and "grammatical gender" are to an English noun.
There are nouns, such as 'mare', or (debatably) 'ship' whose natural gender is perceived to be feminine by significant number of speakers. Most nouns, however, either are of a neutral natural gender or have got no natural gender. (I wonder whether there is a consensus on which of the two is the case.) Wikipedia also seems to suggest that gender pertains to referents rather than to nouns.
In the linked question, the OP derives "grammatical gender" from "natural gender" for those nouns that have got the latter. This is relevant, because a natural gender seems to be the sole reason to even think about a grammatical gender, or traces thereof, for a word. But then it seems to entail something like a partial grammatical category that only some nouns have. It is not inflectional. It is not a remnant of previously existing grammatical gender in English.
Is there any term for what "natural gender" and the putative "grammatical gender" is to a noun?
Grammatical gender is irrelevant to an English noun:
ADJECTIVE
Not connected with or relevant to something:
Imputing grammatical gender to a nound with "natural gender" is a mistake, since there is no mechanism in modern English to classify nouns systematically according to gender.
Natural gender is implicit in a subset of English nouns:
(implicit in) Always to be found in; essentially connected with:
The gender of a referent is woven into the definition of the noun itself:
- A woman is defined as a female human.
- A man is defined as a male human.
- A mare is defined as a female horse.
- A gander is defined as a male goose.
- A lioness is defined as a female lion.
- A boar is defined as a male pig (bear, badger, etc.).
- A hen is defined as a female bird.
The natural gender of a referent is an essential quality connected to the word, but it has no grammatical impact on the use of that word in English.