Grammatical category

In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusive. Frequently encountered grammatical categories include: Case, varying according to the relations between the participants in an action (e.g. subject, object, possession, direction, accompaniment etc.). Noun classes, such as gender, animacy, and so on. Number, varying according to the number of things (e.g. singular or plural). Tense, varying according to when an action takes place (e.g. present, past or future). Aspect, varying according to the state of an action in relation to time (e.g. completed, ongoing, repeated, habitual etc.). Mood and modality, varying according to the speaker's attitude towards an action and its relation to reality (e.g. statement of fact, hypothetical, questioning, ordering, suggesting etc.). Voice, varying according to the role taken by each participant in an action (e.g. active or passive). Although the use of terms varies from author to author, a distinction should be made between grammatical categories and lexical categories. Lexical categories (considered syntactic categories) largely correspond to the parts of speech of traditional grammar, and refer to nouns, adjectives, etc. A phonological manifestation of a category value (for example, a word ending that marks "number" on a noun) is sometimes called an exponent. Grammatical relations define relationships between words and phrases with certain parts of speech, depending on their position in the syntactic tree. Traditional relations include subject, object, and indirect object.