3. Person is that property of substantives which shows whether they designate (1) the speaker, (2) the person spoken to, or (3) the person or thing spoken of.
4. Substantives have inflections of case to indicate their grammatical relations to verbs, to prepositions, or to other substantives.
These four properties of substantives are included under inflection for convenience. In strictness, however, nouns are inflected for number and case only. Gender is shown in various ways,—usually by the meaning of the noun or by the use of some pronoun. Person is indicated by the sense, by the pronouns used, and by the form of the verb.
I. GENDER
66. Gender is distinction according to sex.
Nouns and pronouns may be of the masculine, the feminine, or the neuter gender.
1. A noun or pronoun denoting a male being is of the masculine gender.
Examples:
- Joseph,
- boy,
- cockerel,
- buck,
- footman,
- butler,
- brother,
- father,
- uncle,
- he.
2. A noun or pronoun denoting a female being is of the feminine gender.