Gender of nouns is a grammatical category, manifested in the ability to be combined with specific forms of compatible words. The category of gender can be expressed semantically (that is, in meaning, only for animate nouns), grammatically and syntactically. Semantically, all nouns are masculine, feminine and neuter. Words indicating animals and male persons are masculine (brother, grandfather, student, goose, rooster, horse); nouns naming animals and female persons (sister, grandmother, student, goose, chicken, horse) - to the feminine gender; animals and persons regardless of gender (bogeyman, monster, face (person), child) - to the neuter gender.
The gender of nouns is expressed grammatically by ending in the nominative case. This category of gender is characteristic of both animate and inanimate inflected nouns. In this case, in addition to the 3 main genera, a general genus is also distinguished. The differences between them are presented in the table:
Masculine | Feminine | Neuter gender | Common gender |
The ending is zero, the stem ends with a hard consonant or -th (chair, hero); The ending is zero, the stem ends with a soft consonant, and in the genitive case the endings are -a, -я (horse - horse, doctor - doctor, ivy - ivy). | The ending -a, -ya (hand, earth), except for words naming male persons (servant, governor) and words with the suffix -in, showing an augmentative subjective assessment (domina, mostina); The ending is zero, the stem ends with a consonant, and in the genitive case the ending is -i (rye - rye, tish - tishi, notebook - notebooks). | Ending -o, -e (grain, sea); The words child, monster, monster, face; 10 on -mya (tribe, time, name, banner, seed, stirrup, udder, crown, burden, flame); Some indeclinable inanimate nouns of foreign origin (tabu, taxi, jury, stew, interview, bra). | The endings -a, -ya, in words naming male and female persons (sleepyhead, grumpy, dirty, bully, stutterer, couch potato, orphan, suck-up, roar, ignorant). |
The gender of nouns can be determined syntactically by the form of the agreed word, which depends on the noun. Thus, participles and adjectives that agree with masculine nouns end in -y, -y, -oh (beautiful garden, singing boy, fighting soldier); with feminine nouns - in -aya, -aya (beautiful street, summer time); with neuter nouns - in -oe, -ee (beautiful sky, winter morning).
Also, the gender of nouns is determined using the ending of the predicate, expressed by a verb in the past tense in the subjunctive or indicative mood, or by a participle or Masculine gender - the predicate has a zero ending (the rain has passed, the plan has been completed); feminine - ending -a (the work is finished, the moon has risen); neuter - ending -o (the letter was received, the sun rose).
There are also Most of them belong to the neuter gender (depot, interview and all substantivized indeclinable nouns like “hello”, “hurray”, “yes”, “tomorrow”, “I don’t want”). The following cases are exceptions:
Ga (hectare), coffee, poppies, penalty, suluguni, sirocco, ecu, tornado, shimmy, as well as names of languages (Bengali, Urdu, Suomi, Pashto, Hindi) are masculine;
Avenue, bere, salami, kohlrabi are feminine.
The gender of indeclinable nouns, such as newspapers, magazines, can be determined by the gender of the noun with the meaning of the generic concept (full-flowing Japanese (city) Tokyo, wide (river) Mississippi, published (newspaper) "The Times"). The gender of abbreviations must be determined by the gender of the main word (MSU - masculine - Moscow State University; UN - feminine - United Nations; CIS - neuter - Commonwealth of Independent States). It is impossible to establish the gender of nouns that are not used in the singular, but only in the plural, since they do not have a gender category (trousers, pitchforks, pasta, manger).
The category of gender is related to the category of animate/inanimate. In animate nouns, the masculine and feminine forms are intended to express the meaning of gender ( student -student, dog). But the meaning of gender is expressed, as a rule, only in those nouns that are included in the gender pair.
Family couple is a paired opposition of the nouns m. and f. genders that have the same lexical meaning, but differ in the meaning of biological sex.
From a formal point of view, there are:
suppletive birth couples ( man - woman, grandmother - grandfather, sheep - ram);
derivational(student - student, goose - goose, lion - lioness);
inflectional – having a common base and differing endings ( husband - wife, godfather - godfather, Alexander - Alexandra).
Outside of gender pairs, grammatical gender usually has no gender significance ( person, creature, child, squirrel), with the exception of designations of typically male or female professions or occupations ( steelworker, woman in labor).
More often, one of the words of a generic pair denotes not only a creature of a certain gender, but is also a common name for all creatures of this type ( There are 20 students in the group). In gender pairs denoting a person, only a noun of the m gender ( artist, teacher, musician).
If the words included in the generic pair are names of animals, then the type of animal can be designated as a word of the m genus ( hares, lions, donkeys), and in other words. kind ( cats, sheep, goats).
3. Common nouns
In addition to the 3 main genders, nouns are also distinguished general gender, in meaning they correlate with persons of both male and female gender, in the context they realize the meaning of only one gender ( our / our Sasha, a terrible / terrible bore, Belykh knew / knew).
In the 20th century, when many professions and positions became available to women, some masculine words began to be combined with concordant words not only masculine, but also feminine. In colloquial speech you can hear: the deputy received visitors; master of sports set a new record; the turner did a good job.
Transition words like deputy, master, turner, doctor, doctor, professor into the category of nouns of general gender is not completed, therefore constructions like the doctor said expressions like good doctor are colloquial, and their use is in the forms of oblique cases ( I saw a good doctor) is completely excluded.
In colloquial speech, to designate women by profession, there are names formed using suffixes -sha, -ikha (ticket attendant, doctor, cashier, secretary, doctor, watchman, porter).
Such words are used to a limited extent, on the one hand, because they can be understood in two ways: as the name of the character and as the designation of the wife of a person of the corresponding profession: Here comes our foreman(either the foreman herself, or the foreman’s wife).
On the other hand, such formations are avoided in literary speech because of their colloquial, reduced or even disparaging connotation ( professor, doctor, lodger). This especially applies to words in - Iha, perhaps this is due to unwanted associations with animal names ( hare, elephant).
Such forms are used, as a rule, in stylized speech for the speech characteristics of characters. When addressing a woman by profession, it is recommended to use neutral forms: comrade conductor, comrade cashier.
The above does not apply to neutral forms like weaver, dressmaker and to words that have only a feminine form to denote a profession: manicurist. In professional speech the words are also used sprinter, swimmer.
To indicate masculine correspondence to words ballerina, typist descriptive expressions are used ballet dancer, typewriter. In professional use a couple arose nurse - medical brother.
The gender category of nouns is represented by three types of GZ: masculine GZ, feminine GZ and neuter GZ. Nouns whose grammatical gender is determined by context ( slob, crybaby), are called common nouns (conventional term). In rare cases, when words have two forms of gender (usually one of the forms is more common), they speak of paired gender: key - key, spasm - spasm, unta - unta, shutter - shutter and some others.
Words that are in the plural form or have only the plural form do not have a gender meaning.
Distribution by gender of inflected nouns
Morphologically, the gender of nouns is determined by the nature of the stem and ending. Suffixes ( circus performer - circus performer To ah, Minsk resident - Minsk resident To ah, hedgehog - hedgehog their ah, cook - cook their A), but the main indicator of the gender is the ending.
To the masculinewords include: 1) having a zero ending in the nominative singular case: house, briefcase(in the genitive case these words have the ending a: house - at home, Irtysh - Irtysha); 2) having the ending -а (-я) in the nominative case (these are animate nouns denoting male persons); 3) suffixes –ish-, -ishk-, -ushk-, -in- in words like boot, nightingale, little house,domina(words are formed from masculine nouns); 4) having in the nominative singular case the endings -ой, -й, -й (substantivized adjectives and participles like private, scientist); 5) word journeyman.
To the feminineThese include words that have the endings in the nominative singular: 1) -а (-я); 2) zero ending (in the genitive case - ending -i: joy - joy, Astrakhan - Astrakhan); 3) endings -aya, -aya (substantivized adjectives and participles): bathroom, dining room, laundry.
To the neuter relate : 1) words that have the ending -o (-e) in the nominative singular case; 2) nouns starting with -mya, 3) word child, 4) words with the endings -oe, -ee in the nominative singular case (substantivized adjectives and participles): subject, cake, amphibian.
Group of common nounswords are made up: 1) denoting a person by a characteristic feature or action (with endings -а (-я)): crammed, short, glutton, white-handed; 2) truncated personal names: Valya, Zhenya, Lera; 3) unchangeable surnames: Chernykh, Sagan, Dumbazde, Ozheshko; 4) foreign words denoting persons of different genders: counterpart, protégé, incognito.
Words that retain grammatical gender regardless of the person denoted are not included in this category. Thus, nouns denoting persons by profession are classified by gender in accordance with the type of ending, regardless of the gender of the persons designated. Most nouns naming persons by profession are masculine: doctor, lawyer, surgeon(But: manicurist, nanny, nurse).
Nouns denoting animals are also classified into genders according to the type of ending in the nominative case: squirrel, rook. Nouns in a figurative meaning can refer to both female and male persons: snake, hat, mattress. The grammatical meaning of the gender of the noun remains unchanged.
Some words have a gender-correlative pair: hedgehog - hedgehog, elephant - elephant, teacher - teacher. Sometimes a gender-correlative word has a reduced stylistic connotation ( doctor - doctor, director - director) or takes on a different meaning ( typist - typist, secretary - secretary).
It can be quite difficult to determine whether certain groups of nouns belong to one gender or another. It should be remembered that the words tulle, roofing felt, aerosol, rail, shampoo belong to the masculine gender, and vanilla, rosin, persalt, cochineal, corn- to the feminine.
The gender of inanimate compound nouns written with a hyphen is determined: firstly, by the first part, if both parts change: sofa bed(masculine); secondly, according to the mutable part, if the other is immutable: beta radiation(neuter gender). Quite often the genus is determined by the part that expresses a broader meaning: apartment-museum(feminine).
Nouns that name certain types of objects used in pairs can also be difficult to determine gender. Only one form of gender (feminine) for nouns shoe, sandal, clip, boot.
It must be remembered that the gender of some nouns in the Russian and Belarusian languages does not match: goose is masculine (in Russian) and feminine (in Belarusian), dog is feminine (in Russian) and masculine (in Belarusian).
Gender distribution of unchangeable nouns
1. Unchangeable common nouns distributed by gender as follows:
|
Masculine |
Feminine |
Neuter gender |
Common gender |
|
Names of male persons: referee, bullfighter, impresario |
Names of female persons: frau, madam, peri,(enchantress) |
Names of inanimate objects: bistro, cafe, jury |
Words: protégé, counterpart, incognito, hippie |
|
Names of most animals: cockatoos, chimpanzees, ponies.(Words collie and grizzly can be masculine or feminine). |
Nouns that have received a gender category based on the generic meaning of the word: tsetse (fly), iwasi (herring), broccoli, kohlrabi (cabbage varieties), avenue (street) |
Substantivalized words: polite “hello”, loud “hurray”, our “tomorrow”. |
|
|
Some Exception words: a) names of the winds: sirocco, tornado; b) names of languages: Hindi, Swahili, Urdu; c) names of some products: coffee, suluguni (cheese); d) words: penalty (kick), ecu (coin), kawasaki (type of vessel). |
If the reproductive function of animals is emphasized, then the feminine form of the verb is used, indicating the gender of the animal: The kangaroo gave birth to a baby. |
2. Immutable proper namesnames are distributed according to gender ( Irene- female, Nicolas– masculine), surnames with a vowel (except for unstressed a), as well as surnames with -y(s) refer to words of general gender ( Samoilo arrived, E.K. Korotkikh spoke; Ivan Gornovykh reported).
3. Gender of indeclinable geographical, administrative names, and also the names of printed publications are determined by the generic concept: sunny Batumi(city), broad mississippi(river), yesterday's Times" (newspaper), "Figaro"(magazine) published.
4. In some cases, the same word is used in different generic forms depending on the lexical meaning: Mali(state) annexed O come to the resolution. Mali(a country) concluded A Contract.
Distribution by type of abbreviations
The gender of indeclinable abbreviations is primarily dictated by the gender of the reference word: Oktyabrsky District Department of Internal Affairs(district department of internal affairs) - masculine gender, prestigious Moscow State University(Moscow State University) - masculine, APN(Academy of Pedagogical Sciences) - feminine.
Some abbreviations (usually inflected) acquire gender meanings based on their phonetic appearance, regardless of the main word. Thus, the inflected words belong to the masculine gender: university, registry office(civil registration), Ministry of Foreign Affairs(Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and the inflexible word Housing and communal services(Department of Housing and Utilities) Housing and communal services(Department of Housing and Utilities).
Features of the expression of the semantic attribute of gender (gender) in words denoting animals (zoonyms)
In modern literary language genus category in words denoting animals ( zoonyms), is clearly expressed in grammatical opposition: the hare_ jumped_ - the hare jumped, the white ram_ – white sheep and so on. The paired opposition of masculine and feminine nouns is characterized, as a rule, by the presence of one lexical meaning. For nouns included in birth couple, meaning biological gender is expressed in different ways: grammatical (morphological And syntactic), lexical And word-forming .
In the circle of words denoting animals, the grammatical (morphological) means include a system of inflections. Wed: good horse_; cowardly hare_; striped tiger_; A big bear_ etc. – zoonyms male. In zoonyms female inflection is attached to a stem that has a special word-forming formant - a productive suffix: -ich-, -ic- etc. Compare: cowardly hare, striped tigress, big bear and so on. The gender category denotes the syntactic correlation of nouns with certain forms of adjectives, verbs and pronouns: A big bear slowly walked around the enclosure – A big bear walked slowly around the enclosure. Indicators in such cases are the concordant forms: walked_ big(my_) bear_(m.r.) – walked big(my) she-bear(f.r.).
The word-formation method of expressing the category of gender is very productive in words denoting animals (less often birds). Wed. birth couples“masculine (male) – feminine (female)”: suffixation – lion/lioness(alternating at the root e//Ø), tiger/tigress, bear/she-bear, wolf – she-wolf (k//h), rabbit / rabbit (k//h); dove_ / dove; goose_/goose, truncation of the base – peacock_/peahen etc.
The lexical way of expressing the category of gender is quite productive in zoonym words. Here, different lexemes retain a common lexical meaning and differ only in gender: stallion – mare, ram – sheep, bull - cow etc. For example: wolf_ – she-wolf; donkey_ – donkey; tiger_ – tigress, lion_ – lioness, bear_ – she-bear, eagle_ – eagle; hare_ – hare; peacock - peahen; cat Kitty; dove_ – dove; goose_ – goose; turkey_ – turkey and so on. At gender differentiation Feminine nouns - the names of female animals and birds - are derived from the correlative nouns of the masculine gender. In modern Russian, in a number of cases there are parallel forms to denote male and female: goat_ - goat (goat), wolf_ – she-wolf (wolf), deer_ - doe.
In zoonym words, as well as in other animate nouns, deviations in gender are revealed. For example, in words whale_(m.r.), shark(female) There are no indicators of gender differences. This feature is also manifested in nouns - zoonyms, having no economic purpose. Gender differences in animals and birds do not always coincide with the division of nouns into masculine and feminine. Sometimes in the generic pars of zoonyms a word is used that appears as common name, For example goose - gander/goose. Most nouns denoting animals, birds, and fish, regardless of gender, applies either only to men's or only to the feminine gender. Wed: badger, stork, seal, ostrich– masculine nouns; squirrel, monkey, shark, dog– feminine nouns.
The lexical method conveys the belonging of a person or animal to one or another gender through lexical meaning the word itself (cf. in Russian: cow, bull, ram and so on.). The syntactic way of expressing the category of gender is implemented at the level phrases And offers. Here, whether a person or animal belongs to one or another gender is determined using special lexemes, which accurately indicate attitudes towards a particular gender. These lexemes include the so-called signal words - special names and designations for people and animals, indicating their gender and gender: man And woman; male (male) And female individual (female). In modern Russian, gender pairs are formed quite productively. This happens with multi-level language means – grammatical, lexical And word-forming.
The grammatical gender of nouns is expressed not only semantically, but also manifests itself in inflection And word formation, that is why indicators are needed that express system of inflections,
In fiction, Russian zoonym words are widely represented among nouns with diminutive suffixes, conveying evaluative semantics. Wed: cow – cow (-ushk)- and. R., bull – bull (-ok-)– m.r. and so on. Data word-formation indicators Words are characterized in a certain way by gender. For example:
How is it time for bed - now he plays the following song from the office for her: “Go, my cow, home." Well, she is now floating to the bedroom (N. Leikin).
In the corpus of expressive-evaluative vocabulary, units formed by metaphorical transfer based on the name of the animal, serving for figurative (qualitative) characteristics of a person. Wed. name of the animal (zoosemism) fox and zoocharacteristics (zoomorphism) fox- "cunning man." Regarding the expression of gender differences in zoomorphisms, then the attitude towards gender in modern Russian is determined at the level syntagmatics, And morphologically. Wed. word fox_ in combination with the defined word: What a sly fox you are_(in relation to the face male gender) – What a sly fox you are(in relation to a female person). Let's look at examples.
The gender category is one of the universal categories of the grammatical structure of the Russian language: it covers the most important parts of speech (nouns, adjectives, partly pronouns and numerals, partly a verb). The category of gender in each part of speech manifests itself in a unique way, and at the same time, it brings these categories of words closer together. The category of gender is the main means of expressing the special grammatical semantics of a noun - the meaning of objectivity. The generic meaning is constant morphological sign of a noun (nouns do not change by gender): book, table, window.
The category of gender was previously semantic: it designated the category of gender and was closely related to the category of animacy. In modern Russian, the category of gender covers both animate and inanimate nouns.
Depending on gender, Russian nouns are divided into 5 types:
Masculine nouns (about 46%);
Feminine nouns (approximately 40%);
Neuter nouns (just over 10%);
Common nouns;
Nouns that are outside the gender category.
The grammatical meaning of gender is based on the opposition of 3 grammatical meanings: male, female and average kind. Each grammatical meaning corresponds not to a form, but to a word. Nouns can only have one gender. On this basis, the category of gender is defined as lexico-grammatical, which is expressed not by forms of the same word, but by independent lexemes. The opposition between feminine and masculine nouns is most clearly expressed: it can be traced in all singular word forms ( book - table, books - table, book - table etc.). Less clearly contrasted are masculine and neuter nouns (this opposition is expressed only in the original form - im.p.): table - window, table - window, table - window etc.
General gender is distinguished in the Russian language purely conditionally and does not have a special generic meaning. Common gender are those nouns that can be combined with adjectives and verbs of both masculine and feminine gender: an orphan. The generic meaning by its nature is syntactic: expresses the ability of a noun to be qualified by an adjective in various forms (masculine, feminine and neuter): new coat, new house, new book.
The category of gender is found in nouns only in the singular form. In the plural, the generic indicators have been erased, the generic meaning is unexpressed. Thus, those nouns that have only a plural form are outside the category of gender.
In the modern Russian language, gender is a complex morphological-syntactic phenomenon.
The expression of gender depends on the animate-inanimate nature of nouns:
1) In the group of animate nouns (in the names of persons and animals), the gender is motivated character It has semantic basis, i.e. coincides with the concept of gender. This is expressed in the fact that such nouns have gender pairs: student - student, worker - worker, cat - cat. But not all personal nouns and animal names have gender pairs. Their education is limited by phonetic, stylistic and other reasons. For example, the names of persons by profession (some scientists call them “bigeneric” or even generic nouns) do not have gender pairs: geologist, philologist, dean, rector, director and etc.
These beings can refer to male and female persons. These meanings are found in context. At the same time, in colloquial speech forms of agreement in the feminine gender are used to designate a female person: our doctor got sick - our doctor got sick. In literary language, such forms are considered non-normative: regardless of the person of what gender we are talking about, these forms must be agreed in the masculine form, since these nouns are masculine and require formal agreement in the masculine gender.
These nouns should not be assigned to the general gender, because In colloquial speech, agreement with feminine forms is possible only in the nominative case, while for common nouns, agreement by gender occurs in all case forms:
doctor (m.r.) BUT bully
our (our) doctor our bully - our bully
our doctor, our doctor our bully - our bully
Some names of persons by profession have become words of the general gender: judge, head, colleague.
Nouns that name animals do not always have gender pairs. Elephant - female elephant(the gender pair is recorded in the dictionary). Nouns sparrow, fly denote both female and male; this meaning is revealed only in context.
2) In the group of inanimate nouns, the gender category has an unmotivated, formal character (sun, moon, month). Thus, in most words of the Russian language, the category of gender is not associated with semantic differences, therefore the gender meaning is of a formal, syntactic nature, i.e. affects the agreed forms of words that define nouns: new friend, new girlfriend, new society.
