Two related questions about gender.

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

This was kicked off by the last post.

1. In linguistics, nouns are said to have natural or grammatical gender (this is not an exclusive "or"). Natural gender refers to the actual sex of the object, and grammatical gender refers to the class of a noun. What grammatical gender are words like папа? They are declined like feminine nouns, but given masculine modifiers. And is there a term for this?

2. Are there any instances where nouns that are naturally feminine appear masculine? I've only seen it the other way around.

[Edit] Thank you for all your quick responses!

Comments

[oblomov-jerusal.livejournal.com]

If the noun is indeclinable, assign Neuter agreement. Official rules say that indeclinable кофе is masculine, although many speakers treat it as neuter.