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A grammatical category or functional category is a linguistic term encompassing, among other things:

A grammatical category is a set of features which express related conceptual distinctions of grammatical function
Grammatical function

In linguistics, grammatical functions or refer to syntactic relationships between parts of speech such as subject , object , adjunct, complement ....
. The features in the same category are mutually exclusive, often expressed in a formally similar way, and may be subject to agreement constraints
Agreement (linguistics)

In languages, agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when one word changes in form depending on to which other words it is being related....
.

For example, in English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, the grammatical number
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
 of a noun
Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open class lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
 such as bird in:



is either singular or plural, which is expressed overtly by the absence or presence of the suffix -s, and is constrained by the grammatical number in sing-s singular and sing plural.

The list of all overtly expressed categories in a language constitute the functional items of that language, as opposed to its lexical items.








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A grammatical category or functional category is a linguistic term encompassing, among other things:
  • Animacy
    Animacy

    Animacy is a grammatical category and/or semantic category of nouns based on how sentient or life the referent of the noun is. Animacy can have various effects on the grammar of a language, such as word order, grammatical case endings, or the form a verb takes when it is associated with that noun....
  • Countability (count noun
    Count noun

    In linguistics, a count noun is a noun which can be modified by a numeral and occur in both grammatical number and plural form, as well as co-occurring with quantificational determiners like every, each, several, etc....
     vs. mass noun
    Mass noun

    In linguistics, a mass noun is a common noun that presents entities as an unbounded mass. Given that different languages have different grammatical resources, the actual test for which nouns are mass nouns may vary from language to language....
    )
  • Definiteness
    Definiteness

    In grammar, definiteness is a feature of noun phrases, distinguishing between entities which are specific and identifiable in a given context and entities which are not ....
     (specificity
    Specificity

    Specificity may refer to:* Sensitivity and specificity are related concepts in statistics* A concept relating to Cascading Style Sheets* In linguistics, specificity or definiteness is the distinction of whether the referent is identifiable or not....
    )
  • Evidentiality
    Evidentiality

    In linguistics, evidentiality is, broadly, the indication of the nature of evidence for a given statement, that is, whether evidence exists for the statement and/or what kind of evidence exists....
  • Grammatical aspect
    Grammatical aspect

    In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state. In English, for example, the past-tense sentences "I swam" and "I was swimming" differ in aspect ....
  • Grammatical case
    Grammatical case

    In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject , of direct object, or of possession ....
  • Grammatical gender
    Grammatical gender

    In linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once....
  • Grammatical mood
    Grammatical mood

    Grammatical mood is one of a set of distinctive verb forms that are used to signal Linguistic modality.It is distinct from grammatical tense or grammatical aspect, although these concepts are conflated to some degree in many languages, including English and most other modern Indo-European languages, insofar as the same word patterns are used...
  • Grammatical number
    Grammatical number

    In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
  • Grammatical person
    Grammatical person

    Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deixis reference to a participant in an event, such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns....
  • Grammatical polarity
    Grammatical polarity

    Grammatical polarity is the distinction of affirmative and negative, which indicates the truth or falsehood of a statement respectively. In English language, grammatical polarity is generally indicated by the presence or absence of the modifier not, which negates the statement....
  • Grammatical tense
    Grammatical tense

    Grammatical tense is a temporal language quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, and grammatical person, which verb forms may express....
  • Grammatical voice
    Grammatical voice

    In grammar, the voice of a verb describes the relationship between the action that the verb expresses and the participants identified by its verb arguments ....
  • Noun class
    Noun class

    In linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional....
  • Transitivity
    Transitivity (grammatical category)

    In linguistics, transitivity is a property of verbs that relates to whether a verb can take direct objects. It is closely related to valency ....


A grammatical category is a set of features which express related conceptual distinctions of grammatical function
Grammatical function

In linguistics, grammatical functions or refer to syntactic relationships between parts of speech such as subject , object , adjunct, complement ....
. The features in the same category are mutually exclusive, often expressed in a formally similar way, and may be subject to agreement constraints
Agreement (linguistics)

In languages, agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when one word changes in form depending on to which other words it is being related....
.

For example, in English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, the grammatical number
Grammatical number

In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
 of a noun
Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open class lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
 such as bird in:

  • The bird sing-s.
  • The bird-s sing.


is either singular or plural, which is expressed overtly by the absence or presence of the suffix -s, and is constrained by the grammatical number in sing-s singular and sing plural.

The list of all overtly expressed categories in a language constitute the functional items of that language, as opposed to its lexical items.

See also

  • Agreement
    Agreement (linguistics)

    In languages, agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when one word changes in form depending on to which other words it is being related....
  • Grammatical function
    Grammatical function

    In linguistics, grammatical functions or refer to syntactic relationships between parts of speech such as subject , object , adjunct, complement ....
  • Inflection
    Inflection

    In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as grammatical tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical case....
  • Lexical category
    Lexical category

    In grammar, a lexical category is a linguistic category of words , which is generally defined by the syntactic or morphology behaviour of the lexical item in question....
     (part of speech)
  • Syntax
    Syntax

    In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing Sentence s in natural languages. In addition to referring to the discipline, the term syntax is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the Irish syntax"....