The category of Gender

The category of gender

The category of gender n Modern English is rejected by some grammarians. These scholars maintain that there is no gender in English in the sense it is understood in German or Russian or some other languages as there are no morphological forms indicating a male or female person. Otherlinguists adhere to the opposite view, According to this view the category of gender in English is expressed by the correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns of the 3-rd person singular.It is formed by means of two oppositions,1. human (person) nouns and non -human (non-person) nouns, 2. masculine and feminine in the subgroup of human nouns.As a result of the double oppositional correlation a specific system of 3 gender is established following the traditional terminology,1. the neuter (non-human), 2. the masculine (boy, man, bridegroom, uncle), 3. the feminine (girl, woman, aunt). A great many human nouns in English may refer to the feminine and masculine genders. These are nouns of the so-called common gender (person, friend, cousin, doctor). The grammatical category of gender in English is expressed lexically:1. by menas of using certain notional words as sex indicators: boy-friend, girl-friend, man-doctor, woman-doctor, he-bear, she-bear, Tom-cat, Jane-cat, nancy-goat, billy-goat. 2. by suffixal derivation: actor- actress, tiger-tigress, sculptor-sculptress, hero-heroine.