Gender Common

Summary

A word is classified as “common gender” if it can refer to either a grammatically-masculine or a grammatically-feminine person/thing.

Article

A word is parsed as “common” (in other systems sometimes “unmarked”), when it has potential to refer to either a masculine or a feminine person or thing. Words classified as “common gender” are usually pronouns or verbs.

Examples

In both Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic, 1st person personal pronouns are “gender common”.

In both Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic, finite verbs in 1st person conjugation are “gender common”.