Category of Gender – in English there is no marker for gender on the morphological level, but on the lexico-semantic, however, there are three forms: neuter, masculine and feminine.
1.1. Proper nouns and gender
Names of human beings are classified into male names and female names. There is no particular rule to determine the gender of the names, we know it from social experience. When such a name becomes the name of an inanimate object it still retains its gender even though the object may not have it. For example if we name a doll Alice it will have the semantic feature /+female/ even though the doll has no gender /-sex/.
1.2. Common nouns and gender – usually common nouns’ gender is neuter, however, if a common noun becomes proper(it is used to name a person) it undergoes certain changes. For example we can name a girl Violet (like the flower) and thus it acquires the semantic features /+sex/, /+animate/, /+human/ and /+female/.
1.3 Pronouns and gender – in English some pronouns are gender sensitive: the personal pronouns he, she, it; the relative pronouns who, which; the possessive pronouns his, hers; and the reflexive pronouns himself, herself.
1.4 Gender classes – gender is recognized in the form of a small number of common nouns in English. They are morphologically marked for gender but the suffixes are not grammatical: abbot – abbess; actor – actress, duke – duchess; tiger – tigress;
*The semantic feature /+human/ – common nouns with the semantic feature /+human/ divide into two groups:
-they can assume either the /+male/ or /+female/ feature as in: mother, father, boy, girl, nephew, niece;
-or they can mean both /+male /, /+female/: singer, doctor, professor
*The semantic feature /+animate/, /-human/ – again such nouns can be divided into two groups:
-single gender meaning: stallion – mare; rooster – hen, drake – duck, buck – doe;
-both genders meaning: mouse, rabbit, rat etc.
