Feminine nouns Masculine nouns
Gender is a constant feature category: it is expressed not through variable forms of words, but through noun classification; each noun belongs to only one of the three genders.
In addition, there is a group of nouns in English which can denote either a female or a male in different contexts; these nouns can be substituted by either ‘he’ or ‘she’, e.g.: president, professor, friend, etc. They constitute a separate group of nouns – the common gender nouns. For them the category of gender is a variable feature category.
There are no formal marks to distinguish the strong and the weak members in either of the gender oppositions. They can be distinguished semantically:
- nouns of the neuter gender in the upper level of the opposition is more abstract (strong members) compared to masculine and feminine gender nouns; they are the weak member of the opposition and are naturally used in the position of neutralization. For example: The girl was a sweet little thing; “What is it over there: a man or just a tree?”
- On the lower level of the opposition, masculine gender nouns are the weak member of the opposition (compared to feminine – strong members) and can be used to denote all human beings irrespective of sex, e.g.: Man must change in the changing world. When there is no contextual need to specify the sex of the referent, common gender nouns are also neutrally substituted by the masculine pronoun, e.g.: Every student must do his best.
Besides the cases of neutralization, the most obvious examples of oppositional reduction in the category of gender are the cases when the weak member of the opposition, nouns of neuter gender, are used as if they denote female or male beings, when substituted by the pronouns ‘he’ or ‘she’. In most cases such use is stylistically colored and is encountered in emotionally loaded speech. It is known as the stylistic device of personification and takes place either in some traditionally fixed contexts, e.g.: a vessel – she; or in high-flown speech, e.g., Britain – she, the sea – she. In fairy-tales and poetic texts weak creatures are referred to as she, and strong or evil creature as he, e.g.: Death is the only freedom I will know. I hear His black wings beating about me! (Isles)
4. Formal and functional peculiarities of the singular/plural forms of nouns. Their opposition.The absolute singular (singularia tantum), the absolute plural (pluralia tantum). Oppositional reduction of the category for different groups of nouns.
The category of number presents a classic example of a binary privative grammatical opposition. The category of number is expressed by the paradigmatic opposition of two forms:the singular and the plural. The strong member in this opposition, the plural, is marked by special formal marks, the main of which is the productive suffix –(e)s which exists in three allomorphs - [s], [z], [iz], e.g.: cats, boys, roses. The term “productive” means that new nouns appearing in English form the plural with the help of this suffix. Non-productive means of expressing the plural are either historical relics of ancient number paradigms, or borrowed, e.g.: the suppletive forms with interchange of vowels (man – men, tooth – teeth), the archaic suffix –en (ox – oxen), a number of individual singular and plural suffixes of borrowed nouns (antenna – antennae, stratum – strata, nucleus – nuclei, etc.); in addition, a number of nouns have a plural form homonymous with the singular (sheep, fish, deer, etc.). The singular is regularly unmarked (weak member).
The grammatical meaning of the singular is traditionally defined in a simplified way as “one”, and the meaning of the plural – as “many (more than one)”. This is true for the bulk of the nouns, namely those denoting simple countable objects (table – tables). But the noun in the singular can denote not only “one discrete separate object”, but also substances (water), abstract notions (love), units of measure (hour) and other referents. The same applies to the meaning of the plural: plural forms do not always denote “more than one object”, but express some other meanings, such as feelings (horrors of war), sorts of substances (wines), landscape (sands, waters), etc. Thus, the broader understanding of the grammatical meaning of the singular can be defined as the non-dismembering reflection of the referent and the grammatical meaning of the plural as potentially dismembering reflection of the referent; or, in other words, the singular forms of nouns present their referents as indivisible, and the plural forms – as divisible.