Modern English
Gender is no longer an inflectional category in Modern English. Benjamin Whorf considered grammatical gender to be a covert category in English. The only traces of the Old English gender system are found in the system of pronoun–antecedent agreement, although this is now generally based on natural gender – the sex, or perceived sexual characteristics (or asexual nature), of the pronoun's referent. Another manifestation of natural gender that continues to function in English is the use of certain nouns to refer specifically to persons or animals of a particular sex: widow/widower, actress, cow/bull, etc.
Read more about this topic: Gender In English
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