Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка. Тивьяева И.В. - 31 стр.

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According to some language analysts (B.Ilyish, F.Palmer, and

E.Morokhovskaya), nouns have no category of gender in Modern English. Prof.

Ilyish states that not a single word in Modern English shows any peculiarities in its

morphology due to its denoting male or female being. Thus, the words husband

and wife do not show any difference in their forms due to peculiarities of their

lexical meaning. The difference between such nouns as actor and actress is a

purely lexical one. In other words, the category of sex should not be confused with

the category of gender, because sex is an objective biological category.

correlates with gender only when sex differences of living beings are manifested in

the language grammatically (e.g. tiger – tigress).

Gender distinctions in English are marked for a limited number of nouns. In

present-day English there are some morphemes which present differences between

masculine and feminine (waiter – waitress, widow – widower). This distinction is

not grammatically universal. It is not characterized by a wide range of occurrences

and by a grammatical level of abstraction. Only a limited number of words are

marked as belonging to masculine, feminine or neuter. The morpheme on which

the distinction between masculine and feminine is based in English is a word-

building morpheme, not form-building.

Still, other scholars (M.Blokh, John Lyons) admit the existence of the

category of gender. Prof. Blokh states that the existence of the category of gender

in Modern English can be proved by the correlation of nouns with personal

pronouns of the third person (he, she, it). Accordingly, there are three genders in

English: the neuter (non-person) gender, the masculine gender, the feminine

gender.

5. The Category of Determination

The linguistic status of the article

The question is whether the article is a separate part of speech (i.e. a word)

or a word-morpheme. If we treat the article as a word, we shall have to admit that

English has only two articles - the and a/an. But if we treat the article as a word-

morpheme, we shall have three articles - the, a/an, ø.