A
grammatical category is a property of items within the
grammar of a
language; it has a number of possible values (sometimes called
grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusive within a given category. Examples of frequently encountered grammatical categories include
tense (which may take values such as
present,
past, etc.),
number (with values such as singular,
plural, and sometimes
dual), and
gender (with values such as masculine, feminine and neuter).