There is a peculiarly pkjulili
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There is a peculiarly /pɪˈkjuːliəli/ regular contradiction between the presentation of gender in English by theoretical treatises /ˈtriːtɪz/ and practical manuals. Whereas theoretical treatises define the gender subcategorisation of English nouns as purely lexical or "semantic", practical manuals of English grammar do invariably /ɪnˈveəriəbli/ include the description of the English gender in their subject matter of immediate instruction. In particular, a whole ten pages of A. I. Smirnitsky's theoretical "Morphology of English" are devoted to proving the non-existence of gender in English either in the grammatical, or even in the strictly lexico-grammatical sense [Смирницкий, (2), 139-148]. “Однако на самом деле и здесь выражение «рода» относится не к грамматике, а к лексике. Слово actor – «мужского рода», а actress – «женского рода» потому, что это соответствует реальным внеязыковым фактам, а не вследствие особенностей склонения или каких-либо других формальных грамматических особенностей данных слов. Слово actress по сравнению с actor обозначает реально иное живое существо женского пола, и соотношение actor – actress является по существу таким же, как соотношение слов father отец – mother мать … этот суффикс является не грамматическим, а лексическим, словообразующим. (его можно сопоставить, например, с уменьшительным суффиксом – у в doggy и т.п.). Следовательно, в соотношении actor – actress нет ничего противостоящего общим закономерностям выражения «родовых» различий в системе английских существительных” He said: "However, in fact, here again the expression of "gender" refers not to grammar, but to vocabulary. The word “actor” is of the masculine gender, and actress is of the feminine gender because it corresponds to the real extralinguistic facts, and not because of the features of declension or any other formal grammatical features of these words. The word actress in comparison with the word actor denotes a really different living being of the female sex, and the actor-actress word relation is essentially the same as the relation of the words father -mother... this suffix is not grammatical but lexical, word-building. (it can be compared, for example, with a diminutive suffix -y in doggy, etc.). Consequently, in the actor - actress word relation there is nothing that does not contradict the general laws of the expression of "generic" differences in the system of English nouns". On the other hand, the well-known practical "English grammar" by M. A. Ganshina and N. M. Vasilevskaya, after denying the existence of grammatical gender in English by way of an introduction to the topic, still presents a pretty comprehensive description of the would-be non-existent gender distinctions of the English noun as a part of speech [Ganshina, Vasilevskaya, 40 ff.]. And they said: “In Modern English there is no grammatical gender. The noun does not possess any special gender forms, neither does the accompanying /əˈkʌmpəniŋ/ adjective, pronoun or article indicate any gender agreement with the head-noun: a little boy, a little girl, a little room. What is still traditionally called gender in English is a division of nouns into three classes according to their lexical meaning: masculine /ˈmæskjəlɪn/ (referred to as he)— names of male beings; feminine (referred to as she) — names of female beings; neuter /ˈnjuːtər/ (referred to as it) — names of lifeless things and abstract notions”. That the gender division of nouns in English is expressed not as variable forms of words, but as nounal classification (which is not in the least different from the expression of sub-stantive gender in other languages, including Russian), admits of no argument. However, the question remains, whether this classification has any serious grammatical relevance. Closer observation of the corresponding lingual data cannot but show that the English gender does have such a relevance. |