Gender may be subdivided into two types: sex-based distinctions vs. grammatical gender. Sex-based distinctions are probably found in all languages of the world; in Papiamentu (Caribbean, Ibero-Romance-based), for example, there is a contrast between mama ‘mother’ and tata ‘father’. This contrast, however, is a matter of lexical semantics. By contrast, grammatical gender requires syntactic evidence, called agreement. Agreement may be exhibited, for example, by verbs, adjectives, determiners, or numerals. An example of a language displaying agreement is French, as in un grand clocher ‘a (m.) big (m.) church steeple’ vs. une grande table ‘a (f.) big (f.) table’. In these examples, both the indefinite article and the adjective agree with their noun in gender.
