Grammatical categories

A grammatical category is a set of syntactic features that

• express meaning from the same conceptual domain

• occur in contrast to each other

• are typically expressed in the same fashion

• are often subject to agreement constrains

Grammatical categories encompass:

• Grammatical aspect, which is associated with verbs that express a temporal view of the event or state expressed by the verb

• Grammatical case, which is determined by the syntactic or semantic function of a noun or pronoun

• Definiteness, which is concerned with the grammaticalization of identifiability and nonidentifiability of referents

• Grammatical mood, which is one of the distinctive forms thatare used to signal modality, which in turn is a facet of illocutionary force

• Noun class, which is a grammatical system that some languages use to overtly categorize nouns

• Grammatical number, which expresses count distinctions

• Grammatical polarity, which distinguishes affirmative and negative

• Tense, which typically marked on the verb, that deictically refers to the time of the event or state denoted by the verb in relation to some other temporal reference point

• Transitivity, which is the number of objects a verb requires or takes in a given instance

• Grammatical voice, which expresses the semantic functions attributed to the referents of a clause