I've been taught that a child is gender-neutral noun. But in the textbook on linguistics I've been reading, the noun is used as feminine. For example, a sentence in the book goes like this:
The child must also learn many aspects of grammar from her specific linguistic environment.
Is there an explanation for the use of the pronoun her instead of its?
Child is gender neutral. As a result, when referring to a child, one must then choose a pronoun he, she or they when referring to the said child, as English does not have a gender neutral way of referring to that individual. This causes a problem for writers. Whatever you choose could be wrong.
Some would write he, but that sounds sexist and presumptive. Some write they, but this does not confirm the singular as it could refer to many. As an alternative some writers have taken to using she to balance those that historically have used the masculine form.
Other writers go to great lengths to avoid any of these forms by just rewriting the sentences completely.
Stack Exchange questions and answers have the same problem. Do we refer to a writer as he, she, they...? Whatever one chooses makes implications that it may not be correct.
We almost never use it or its to refer to a child, as this form is reserved for objects and not people and thus is considered to be demeaning.
he and the receiver she. This removed any real bias and was also helpful when reading. It's possible (I haven't read your textbook) the authors decided on a convention like this.
Commented
Jan 3, 2016 at 22:05
"Child" is, indeed, gender-neutral.
For a long time, "he" was considered to be both the male pronoun and the non-gender-specific pronoun (see Wikipedia). An older text would talk about a child learning from his environment and it would be understood to mean that both male and female children do so. "They" has a long history of use as a gender-neutral pronoun and is widely accepted, though some continue to insist that it is wrong. The use of "she" as a gender-neutral pronoun appears to be something of a backlash against the former use of "he"; it's quite common in modern writing.
Wikipedia notes that "it" is considered OK to refer to a child in situations where there's no emotional investment, especially in scientific contexts. Indeed, Wikipedia uses your very example as a case where it's reasonable to use "it". On the other hand, if I was talking about your child and said "Is it OK if I give it some candy?", you'd be fully justified in slapping me in the face or worse.
The least controversial situation is to just rephrase the sentence. For example, "they" is absolutely uncontroversially the gender-neutral plural pronoun, and the sentence you quote in your question seems to be talking about children in general, rather than a specific single child. Thus,
Children must also learn many aspects of grammar from their specific linguistic environment.
(Or, if you prefer, "linguistic environments", since not all children have the same one.)
English doesn’t have “grammatical” gender at all, not even for he, she, or it. The “gender” he, she, and it refer to the actual, real-world gender of the antecedent, not its grammatical gender. In general, one would use the word she for child because this particular child is female.
Even in cases such as this, where there is no actual person (or there are several people, in a mix of genders, and the text is referring to any one), the language still refers to the hypothetical “example person” as a person, with a gender. The pronouns used, therefore, reflect the gender of the example person. Again, this is not grammatical gender.
In the past, as a matter of convention, “the example person” was always male, and thus he was used as a pronoun for the example person. More recently, the example person will sometimes be written as female, that is, with she. Some authors will also use both roughly equally (though they can only switch when introducing a new example person; for clarity, any person who is supposed to be some consistent example individual could not switch genders).
The reason for this is simple: by having the example person consistently be male, you give the impression that all of the people involved are male. It has not always been clear when male was chosen by convention, or because the individual under discussion actually is expected to be male. Switching to female does not fix the ambiguity, but at least it makes things more even: by having everything use male examples, it gives the impression that men do everything.
Finally, it is not gender-neutral, it is the gender-specific pronoun for the neuter gender, that is, the gender of inanimate objects. It is almost-always inappropriate, if not exceedingly offensive, to refer to a person with it as it implies that he or she is not a person, or not even a living thing.
The word child is indeed gender-neutral. In fact, really English as a whole doesn't have grammatical gender. All that matters is the gender of the actual person that it is referring to.
If the child being referred to is a boy, then you use he. If the child is a girl, you use she.
If the writer is not really referring to a specific child (as in this example), then you have a problem. Traditionally, writers used the male he. In modern English, that implies that all children are male unless otherwise specified, which smacks of sexism. Some use the wordy he or she. Others use just she, as a sort of corrective to centuries of assuming maleness. Still others borrow they to refer to a single generic person.
Of course, it's also possible to rewrite the sentence in the plural.
From historic perspective, it used to be an appropriate pronoun for a child.
http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/09/28/a_girl_called_it/
This is similar to other Germanic languages that have grammatical gender (which has degenerated in English except rare cases like ship-she), like German "das Kind" or Dutch "het kind".
Modern connotation of the neutral pronoun in American English seems to have changed as other responses note.
Child is not gender neutral, but it is gender normative. In modern English it is gender neutral, but it depends upon its use and more importantly it derives from kilþei a Gothic word for Womb. It entered Old English with a female gender moniker and retained it only until the onset of Modern English. Arguably, Child/Cild is thus feminine in gender reference especially within given contexts referencing pregnancy. While it has been made neuter through over usage.
This reflects the gender bias but gender normative nature of the word "guys". While masculine in nature and in its original usage, it has also gained a neutral usage.
The child must also learn many aspects of grammar from their specific linguistic environment