Gender of Nouns
статья по английскому языку по теме

Gender of Nouns.

Кукушкина О.В.

Государственное автономное образовательное учреждение среднего профессионального образования Московской области «Губернский профессиональный колледж» город Серпухов.

Gender of nouns is given very little attention to by teachers in the classroom. It is thought to be too elementary to be attended, as the category of gender in English is a highly controversial subject in grammar.

The fact is, the category of gender in English differs from the category of gender in many other languages, for example, in Russian, in French or in German.

According to their meanings English nouns are classed as belonging to the masculine, feminine and neutral gender. So, names of male beings are masculine (e.g. man, boy, husband, bachelor, monk, gentleman, nephew), names of female beings are feminine (e.g. woman, girl, wife, mother, sister, lady, niece). All other nouns are said to be neuter (e.g. table, house, computer, window, forest, opinion).    

In fact, gender relating the person/thing to "he," "she" or “it” does not excite much interest because purely grammatical means for its expression are absent. Gender is   inbuilt in the nounal semantics, that is why some nouns such as boy, man, husband have "he" in their semantic structure; girl, woman, wife have "she" in their semantic structure; that is, "he" and "she" are inbuilt in the meaning of names of human beings of a certain sex and only English person nouns are subject to gender expression. All other nouns, names of inanimate things and names of living beings of a lower organization, such as birds, animals, insects, etc. are associated with "it" as part of their semantics.[1;49]

However, there are nouns in the English language which can be treated as either males or females (e.g. friend, cousin, parent, teacher, neighbour, professor). They are said to be of common gender.

When there is no need to make a distinction of sex, the masculine pronoun is used for these nouns. Besides, lexico-grammatical distinctions as the first component of a compound formation such as man/woman, male/female, boy/girl, he/she can be used:

he-cousin, she-cousin

a woman-doctor, a man-doctor

a male-patient, a female-patient

Students ought to be cautious when they choose the first noun. "A nurse" was traditionally treated as feminine, to indicate a man doing this kind of job "a male nurse" should be used. "Engineer" was traditionally meant as masculine, "a woman engineer" is used for a lady. The words "boyfriend," "girlfriend" have specific connotations.

There are traditional cases of association of certain nouns with certain genders. We use “it” for an animal, but "he-she" can also be used for an animal (e.g. a he-wolf, a she-wolf, a he-parrot, she-parrot) if we know the animal's sex and feel sympathy or interest(e.g. Go and find the cat and put him out).

"She" can be used for a country, a city in myths, poetry or politico-economic contexts (e.g. England is has an unfavourable balance of trade. The value of  her  imports is much greater than the value of her exports.) [ 2: 23]

"Nature" is "it" in a neutral context and "she" in an emotionally coloured text (e.g. If Nature is to be commanded, she must be obeyed).

The words "ship," "plane," "boat," "hovercraft" are referred to as "she"  (e.g. What a lovely ship! What is she called?)

The words "car", "automobile" are referred to as "it", however, they, especially those in which the speaker takes a personal pride, can be referred to as "she" or "he" by men or women respectively (e.g. Getting out of the car he said to the man in the overalls: “ Fill her up, please”).    

"It" may be used for person nouns if we mean not a person but the social position, status, rank (e.g. She's the managing director and looks it.)

"It" is closely associated with the absence of individuality and is often used scornfully.

There are various ways of indicating the belonging of the noun to the feminine gender as opposition to the non-expression of the feminine gender is understood as belonging to the masculine gender. They are: suffixes, compound words of a certain structure, different words.

The suffix -ess, -ine, -ix, -ina, -ette mark the feminine gender:

czar - czarina

executor - executrix

heir - heiress

hero - heroine

host - hostess

tiger - tigress

testator - testatrix

usher - usherette

The suffix -er marks the masculine gender: widow - widower.

Gender is expressed in compound words with the second component -man, -woman, -boy, -girl, -lord, -lady, -cock, -hen:

a woman driver- a man driver

salesman - saleswoman

washer man - washerwoman

cash boy - cash girl

landlord - landlady

peacock – peahen

The masculine noun "bridegroom" is opposed to the feminine noun "bride."

There are different words for creatures of male and female sex:

man - woman

lad - lass

brother - sister

bachelor - spinster

father - mother

husband - wife

son - daughter

nephew - niece

uncle - aunt

gentleman - lady

sir – madame

monk- nun

lord – lady

Students have to be aware of different connotations in the meanings of apparent pairs: witch/wizard, manager/manageress, governor/ governess, lord/lady, master/mistress and others are not equal in status and meaning in some or all contexts. As a rule the feminine noun differs from the corresponding masculine counterpart not only in the expression of another sex, but has other overtones and even meanings. Here are some of the meanings of the nouns in the mentioned pairs:

lord - supreme male ruler; God;

lady - woman belonging to upper classes; woman who has good manners and some claim to social position; (GB) used of and to wives or daughters of some nobles;

master - man who has others working for him and under him; male head of the household; captain of a merchant ship; male teacher; male owner of a dog; the Master - Jesus Christ;

mistress - woman at the head of the household or family; woman in authority who gives orders to servants; woman school teacher; woman having regular sexual intercourse with one man to whom she is not married;

governor - person who governs a province or a colony or (US) state;

governess - women who is employed to teach young children in a private family;

witch - woman said to use magic, esp. for evil purposes; (fig) fascinating and bewitching woman;

wizard - magician; person with amazing abilities. [1:51]

To express some male or female animals different words are used. There is often a quartet: the name of the male, the name of the female, the name of the young and the common name (e.g. drake-male, duck-female, duckling-young, duck-common).

People object to words for occupations and professions that are marked to indicate sex differences since they think that men and women are not treated in the same way.

Speech and writing that make unnecessary distinctions based on sex are called sexist language. The word "Mr" does not show whether or not a man is married whereas "Mrs" is used for a married woman and "Miss" for a single woman making the distinction of a woman's social position. The term "Ms" was suggested as a compromise. "He," "him," "his" can refer to a male or a female or to someone whose sex is unknown (e.g. The child has lost his toy. The student took his book and went out).

The speech device enabling us to present lifeless things as living beings is called personification. It is also called "gender of animation." Personification gives nonhuman things the qualities, abilities, or emotions of people. Personification also uses abstract ideas; these abstract ideas are often capitalized (e.g. Death is the only freedom I will know. I hear. His black wings beating about me! (Isles) Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat, Sighing, through all her works, gave signs of woe. - John Milton)

In fairy tales animals, fish and birds can be associated with any gender required by the sense. The extracts below are a good illustration of references of names of birds to different genders (e.g. One morning the old Water Rat put his head out of his hole. He had bright beady eyes and stiff grey whiskers, and his tail was a long bit of black India-rubber. O. Wild “ The Devoted Friend”).

Though the overwhelming majority of linguists stick to the opinion that the category of gender existed only in Old English. They claim that, since formal gender marks disappeared by the end of the Middle English period and nouns no longer agree in gender with adjacent adjectives or verbs, there is no grammatical category of gender in modern English. However, gender does play an important role in the English language. While masculine pronouns (and sometimes nouns as well) have historically been used to refer to mixed-gender groups or to an individual whose gender is not specified, the acceptability of this trend has been challenged in recent decades. [3:19]

Shaped by the passage of time and the influence of various philosophies, the English language-and gender usage within the English language-continues to change.

Literature:

1. Куликовская Л.А. Консультации по английской грамматике /М. Флинта:

    Наука, 1999.

2. Качалова К. Н. , Израилевич  Е. Е. Практическая грамматика английского 

 языка  / ЮНВЕС Москва, 1998

3. Ривлина А.А. Теоретическая грамматика английского языка DOCX. Учебно-методическое пособие /А.А. Ривлина, Благовещенск  БГПУ, 2009.