The category of gender

Gender, in the English language, is a distinction of certain words according as they indicate sex or the lack of it.

Gender, in English, belongs only to nouns and pronouns. No other words have any distinctions of gender.

The category of gender is expressed in English by the obligatory correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns of the third person.

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.

As a result of the double oppositional correlation, a specific system of three genders arises, which is 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. The weak member of the opposition comprises both inanimate and animate non-person nouns. Here belong such nouns as tree, mountain, love, cat, swallow, ant, crowd, etc.

The strong member of the lower opposition is the feminine subclass of person nouns. Here belong such nouns as woman, girl, mother, bride, etc. The masculine subclass of person nouns comprising such words as man, boy, father, bridegroom, etc. makes up the weak member of the opposition.

The oppositional structure of the category of gender can be shown schematically on the following diagramme

GENDER

+ -

PERSON NOUNS NON-PERSON NOUNS

+ -

FEMININE NOUNS MASCULINE NOUNS

According to James Fernald there are 3 genders in English

- Masculine: all nouns denoting being of the mail sex

- Feminine: all nouns denoting being of the female sex

- Neuter: all nouns denoting objects of no sex

J. Leech gave the following classification of English genders:

Gender

Human (personal) Non-human (non-personal)

-masculine - boy

-feminine – actress, queen

-dual (masculine and feminine!) doctor!

-common (substitutes by “it”

-collective

English words can be:

- Morphologically marked for gender (actress - actor) VERY LIMITED! Actress – strong memder, marked!

- Semantically marked for gender (boy-girl, king-queen) due to the meaning and our knowledge of the meaning!

- Lexically marked for gender (boyfriend-girlfriend)