vse_otvety / 39_Kategoria_grammaticheskogo_roda_v_yazyke

The grammatical category of gender

It’s not a purely grammatical category, but lexico-grammatical.

There is a peculiarly regular contradiction between the presentation of gender in English by theoretical treatises (научные труды) and practical manuals. Whereas theoretical treatises define the gender subcategorization of English nouns as purely lexical or "semantic", practical manuals of English grammar do invariably include the description of the English gender in their subject matter of immediate instruction.

In particular, a whole ten pages of A.I. Smirnitsky's theoretical "Morphology of English" are devoted to proving the non-existence of gender in English either in the grammatical, or even in the strictly lexico-grammatical sense. On the other hand, the well-known practical "English grammar" by MA. Ganshina and N.M. Vasilevskaya, after denying the existence of grammatical gender in English by way of an introduction to the topic, still presents a pretty comprehensive description of the would-be non-existent gender distinctions of the English noun as a part of speech.

The category of gender is expressed in English by the obligatory correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns of the third person. These serve as specific gender classifiers of nouns, being potentially reflected on each entry of the noun in speech. The category of gender is strictly oppositional. It is formed by two oppositions related to each other on a hierarchical basis.

One opposition functions in the whole set of nouns, dividing them into person (human) nouns and non-person (non-human) nouns. The other opposition functions in the subset of person nouns only, dividing them into masculine nouns and feminine nouns. Thus, the first, general opposition can be referred to as the upper opposition in the category of gender, while the second, partial opposition can be referred to as the lower opposition in this category.

As a result of the double oppositional correlation, a specific system of three genders arises, which is somewhat misleadingly represented by the traditional terminology, the neuter (i.e. non-person) gender, the masculine (i.e. masculine person) gender, the feminine (i.e. feminine person) gender.

The strong member of the upper opposition is the human subclass of nouns, its sememic mark being "person", or "personality". The weak member of the opposition comprises both inanimate and animate non-person nouns. Here belong such nouns as tree, mountain, love, etc.; cat, swallow, ant, etc.; society, crowd, association, etc.; bull and cow, cock and hen, horse and mare, etc.

In cases of oppositional reduction, non-person nouns and their-substitute (it) are naturally used in the position of neutralization. E.g.:

Suddenly something moved in the darkness ahead of us. Could it be a man, in this desolate place, at this time of night? The object of her maternal affection was nowhere to be found. It had disappeared, leaving the mother and nurse desperate.

The category of gender is inherently semantic, i.e. meaningful so far as it reflects the actual features of the named objects.

Usually the use of pronouns show the gender. We imply lexical units: lion-lioness, boy-cousin-girl-cousin.

In Russian we have three genders: feminine, masculine and neuter. Every word can be defined according to its ending and doesn’t depend on its belonging to human or non-human group.

Exercises: define the gender according to the lexical means; put the words into the necessary column according to its gender; change the nouns into pronouns.