The category o gender in modern english

INTRODUCTION

The theme of the present paper is “The category of gender in Modern English”. The reasons for writing a paper on this topic are numerous. At the present time research in the field of language and communication attract the attention of a large range of researchers.  Perceptions of male and female occur at different levels of language system, including the grammatical category ofgender. At the base of the category of gender is given extralinguistic- existence of people of both sexes with its attendant gender values. Changes of extralinguistic nature: women's emancipation, the redistribution of male and female roles in society cause changes in the prototype and, accordingly, is reflected in language.
Another reason is that Old English by the 11th century was beginning toreplace grammatical gender with natural gender. Nowadays the linguistic realization of gender differences is one of the burning matters in social spheres, being at the same time the issue of constant misunderstandings. Gender in Modern English is no longer an inflectional category and now it is based on the semantic principle. English divides nouns and pronouns into three genders- masculine,feminine and neuter. People often cannot distinguish to which gender a certain word belongs. Therefore, the aim of the paper is:
* to examine the concept of the category of gender in Modern English and to determine the differences that distinguish genders.
The objectives:
* studying and analysis of literature about the category of gender in Modern English;
* examination of theproblems and peculiarities of gender expression in Modern English;
*  identification of the main means of expression of gender


The research question:
What are the peculiarities, differences that distinguish genders in Modern English?
The hypothesis:
Nowadays in Modern English there are some traces and differences that distinguish genders; despite that there in Modern English is naturalgender, there are some features of grammatical gender from Old English.
The methods of research:
* data collecting
* analysis
The methods of data collecting:
* comparative analysis of literary sources
The present research is based on the study of analysis of 21 bibliography sources in 2 languages, the essentional ones being:
* Fernández- Domínguez, J. (2007) ADiachronic-Synchronic Review of Gender in English. University of Alicante.
* Fowler, W.C. (1855) English grammar; the English language in its elements and forms, with a history of its origin and development, designed for use in colleges and schools. Harper and Brothers publishers. New York.
* Knutson, A. (1905) The gender of words denoting living beings in English, and the different ways of expressingdifference in sex. University of California Libraries. California.
The outline of the chapters:
The paper consists of 3 chapters. In the introduction there are reports on the aims and objectives of the study, and there are made basic provisions. The first chapter focuses on the general term gender and on the history of gender in English. The second chapter focuses on the genders in Modern English,the distinction of genders and their peculiarities. The third chapter focuses on the different approaches which are used to solve ambiguous cases. In conclusion there are set out the results of the study.

1. CATEGORY OF GENDER IN MODERN ENGLISH

The present chapter will focus on the general term “gender” and particularly on gender in Modern English- how it is defined and classified.Gender is a grammatical distinction in nouns expressing the natural distinction of sex. The word gender is from the French genre and the Latin genus, and properly means kind. [5; 59]
English gender is realized as masculine, feminine and neuter forms in order to explain the relations between the animate noun and its external referent. This distinction had been inherited from the Indo- European...