Question: 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*?

Answer: 
"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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He#Gender_neutral)). 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they) 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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-specific_and_gender-neutral_pronouns#It_and_one_as_gender-neutral_pronouns) 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.)
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.