The article addresses the relation between the grammatical gender and the linguistic encoding of sex distinction (natural gender). Our goal is to problematize the category of gender as a multipart and multifunctional linguistic phenomenon operating in diverse dimensions of a language. The analysis of Italian and Polish languages illustrates that grammatical gender – whose main function is to signal syntactic relations between text constituents – and natural gender – whose main function is to encode information about the sex of a referent – are in principle autonomous and independent linguistic phenomena which are however strongly interrelated in a linguistic system through a morphological and syntactic interface.

The objective of this paper is twofold. First, it aims at problematizing the inhomogeneity of linguistic features belonging to the so-called neostandard Italian, often presented as a monolithic inventory of linguistic forms and phenomena. Second, it intends to set such a linguistic variety in the context of Italian language pedagogy, still strongly anchored to the normative grammar and to the canons of standard Italian. Specifically, some rapidly consolidating neo-standard traits will be examined under the following aspects: structural and semantic complexity, functional and communicative value and extension in today’s usage.