WEB-ресурс научно-практических конференций

Filinchuk I.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CATEGORY OF GENDER IN NEW ENGLISH

In Old English period, gender is expressed morphologically, that?s why its assignment, except the morphological classification of the noun, also was the expression of syntactic links between words by means of concordance them in gender. But in Modern English morphological markers of the category of gender appeared to be mostly lost, that is why the meaning of gender in English is transferred by: a) lexical meanings of the word: masculine gender – man, boy ; feminine gender – woman, girl ; neutral gender – table, house ; b) personal pronouns – he, she, it ; c) in the word?s structure with the help of suffixes – ess, - ine, -er : an actress , a heroine, a widower, a tigress ; d) compound nouns: a woman-doctor; a he-wolf; a she-wolf .

Correlation with that or other gender occurred due to division of nouns according to stems that appear to be more ancient than division of them according to grammar gender. This explains the divergence between the grammar gender and the sex, that occurred in some cases in Old English. For example: the noun – woman (OE wifman) was masculine gender; maiden (OE m?gden) – neutral gender. Proceeding from the point that the grammar gender not often corresponds to natural gender(sex), a great number of scientists confess that the form, but not the meaning is a decisive factor of the considering problem that however is not relevant to Modern English.

As in many other languages the category of gender in English is strongly tied with the category of “ animate – inanimate ” and the category of inanimate practically corresponds with the neutral gender. From this naturally comes the conclusion that in Modern English words are classified according to “gender” through the things with which they correlate. Formally it is expressed first of all in election of different personal pronouns. This choice is basically based on the indication “ animate – inanimate ” . At the same time there is no simple dichotomy in English that could correlate all “ inanimate ” nouns with pronoun “it” and animate nouns consequently with “he or she”. Differentiating from the Ukrainian language where animate names usually can not correlate with neutral gender, in English there is the whole class of nouns denoting animals, birds and other living beings which correlate with general gender and have the pronoun “it”.

The gender as a grammar concept, displaying in the most clear shape in Ukrainian language, in Modern English is omitted; the gender as a lexico-grammar category also appeared to be partly lost in the English language in the process of it historical development. According to this in Modern English especially great meaning acquires natural gender.

However, the formal nature of correlation between the natural gender and grammar one could be absolutely unambiguously because for example if we take only isolated words in a mean of a clue, all they will relate as to masculine gender. So to feminine gender consequently grammar gender would be irrelevant.

The only purpose of the category of gender in English is expressing of semantic and lexical relations. Consequently, on the modern stage of the development of English in generally case can be spoken about lexico-semantic category of gender , though at present almost all scientists agree that there is evidently deficiently only semantic criterion to understand complex nature of the grammar gender and it is necessary to use all the linguistics facts, relating to this category.

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.

ЛІТЕРАТУРА:

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2. Аракин В.Д. Очерки по истории английского языка. - М.: Просвещение, 1985. - 254с

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