such as Navajo which uses degrees of animacy instead of grammatical gender
What makes their use of degrees of animacy not a use of grammatical gender? Keep in mind that even though it’s called “gender” because in European languages it usually maps in some way onto human sexual identity, linguistically speaking grammatical gender has nothing to do with human gender identity.
What makes their use of degrees of animacy not a use of grammatical gender? Keep in mind that even though it’s called “gender” because in European languages it usually maps in some way onto human sexual identity, linguistically speaking grammatical gender has nothing to do with human gender identity.
Good point. What I meant is that it’s different from grammatical gender typical of European languages as you defined it.
Grammatical gender is a bad name for such a general concept that goes beyond the social definition of gender. In fact, that term is a bit eurocentric.