R.Rusanov wrote:
Also you'll find that a great many of the world's languages include gender, and those that don't almost always have some sort of noun class system to make up for it. It's not a purely Eurocentric thing, like a certain thread on this forum might make you think.
Sorry, but this is arrant misinformation you're spreading!
WALS's survey shows that of 257 languages, 84 had gender (sex based noun classes), 28 had other noun classes, and 145 had no noun classes.
Gender appears to be strong in Indoeuropean, Afroasiatic, and Northeast Caucasian, and there are also some clusters of Papuan, Non-Pamanyungan, and Amazonian languages with it. Non-sex-based nounclasses are basically a feature of Niger-Congo languages. Noun classes of all kinds are comparatively rare in the Americas, and in Asia outside India, Afghanistan, NE Caucasus and the Middle East. Three times more languages have no classes than have two, twice has many have two as have three, and twice as many have three as have four. Five or more is a Niger-Congo thing.
And if you mean noun classes that are determined by formal characteristics of the word as well as just semantics (eg by final vowel), you really are (with, obviously, exceptions here and there) the three language families of Indoeuropean, Nigercongo, and Afroasiatic.