Noun and its types pakistanexams.com

Lecture No. 2 Understanding the Gender of the Noun

Introduction

A noun is naming an entity. That entity can be male, female, or neutral gender. Neutral gender means the gender is unknown or that the noun has no gender. For gender, nouns have been divided into four categories. These are Masculine Gender, Feminine Gender, Common Gender, and Neutral Gender.


Masculine Gender


In Gender of Noun, the Masculine Gender is used to denote a male being or male animal. For this purpose, He is used, and its possession is shown by his.


Feminine Gender


In Gender of Noun, the Feminine Gender is used to denote a female being or female animal. For this purpose, she is used, and its possession is shown by her.


Common Gender


In Gender of Noun, Common Gender is used to denote some male or female (child, thief, teacher, servant, baby, friend, etc.), when we don’t know the gender. Therefore, we use the word “It” for common gender, and its possession is shown by “its”. For example, when a thief steals a pen, we can say “It stole a pen.” Here we used “it” because the gender of the thief is unknown.


Neutral Gender


In Gender of Noun, Neutral Gender is used to denote an entity that has no gender. For example, book, pen, table, etc. Neutral Gender is mostly used for things that don’t have life. We use “it” for such nouns and “its” is used to show the possession.


Personified


Sometimes nouns are personified. It means they are spoken about as if those nouns are alive. They are imagined as living beings. Their gender is denoted either by “he” or “she”. The personification of Nouns is mostly used in poems.
He is used for things that are: hard, cruel, powerful, unjust, ugly, etc. For example, for sun, death, etc. we use he.
She is used for things which are: soft, kind, caring, beautiful, responsible, weak, oppressed, etc. For example, for the earth, moon, peace, justice, mercy, etc. we use she.
Note: We can also use “it” for this purpose. It can also be used to refer to the sun, earth, or moon.