Origin of the neuter gender in the Russian language. Adaptation of foreign borrowings

D. V. Sichinava, 2011

Genus- This word-classifying grammatical category(see Grammatical category) Russian subject words (otherwise substantives: nouns, noun pronouns). The category of gender of objective words is manifested through the grammatical indicators of the word forms of Russian attributive words that agree with them (otherwise adjectives: adjectives, pronouns-adjectives, numerals-adjectives, participles of verbs; also anaphoric pronouns like he who), as well as word forms of the verb in the indicative mood of the past tense and the subjunctive mood. For attributive words and verbs, the category of gender is inflectional(see Grammatical category). The word-classifying gender and the concordant gender are inseparable parts of a single category; the first is manifested through the second, the second is dictated by the first [Kopeliovich 2008:93].

In the example below, words for which gender is a word-classifying category are underlined; words for which gender is an inflectional category are in italics.

(1) (red, mine, fourth, open) book ( lay)

(red, mine, fourth, open) notebook (lying)

(red, mine, fourth, open) letter (lying)

· male kind;

· female kind;

· average kind.

In [Zaliznyak 1967] it is also highlighted doubles genus(see), for lexemes pluralia tantum; The paired gender is the agreement of such lexemes in the plural.

According to a sample of 34 thousand nouns, nouns male make up about 46%, feminine 41%, neuter - 13% [Muchnik 1971].

Gender is inherent in all nouns of the Russian language (for paired gender, see below(see )) and is for them syntactically independent category(see Grammatical category), therefore, many authors consider it as the main grammatical category of the Russian noun [Voeykova 2008]. The gender of objective words does not have an unambiguous morphological expression in the form of the noun itself, although it correlates in a certain way with its inflectional type ( morphological genus(cm. )):

(2) F.A. Petrovsky assured that in his youth he saw a hairdressing salon with the inscriptions: “men’s hall”, “women’s hall”, “children’s hall”. [M. L. Gasparov. Records and extracts (1998)]

1. Gender and concordant class

1.1. Consensus class. Genus according to A. A. Zaliznyak

Traditional grammar considers gender as a characteristic of a word; in [Zaliznyak 1967] an approach is proposed in which the genus is considered in close connection with the so-called concordant class.

According to the definition given in [Zaliznyak 1967], a concordant class is a set of nouns that require (with a fixed grammatical meaning) the same word forms of any attribute (adjective part of speech - adjectives, etc.) with a concordant syntactic connection. In other words, these are non-overlapping groups of words, with all the words of one of which the agreed parts of speech agree equally (but at the same time differently with any two words from different groups).

The concordant class is a grammatical category because all nouns have it (see Grammatical category).

[show note]

Concordant class is a term often mentioned when describing the grammar of the languages ​​of Africa, Dagestan, and a number of other areas. Typically, systems with named classes are systems that are similar to generic ones, but with big amount class and other semantic oppositions between them. In a number of such languages ​​(the Niger-Congo family), the concordant class has a special indicator, in others (Dagestan, Atlantic) the form of a word does not predict its class affiliation. Russian language belongs to the intermediate type; Nouns do not have an unambiguous indicator of gender, but there is a certain correlation between the type of inflection and gender (see below, about morphological gender). In Russian grammatical terminology, it was first proposed to be used by P. S. Kuznetsov.

In the Russian language, the concordant class does not coincide with the traditional gender, but is obtained by “multiplying” the gender by the sign of animation, since the forms of the accusative case for animate and inanimate names differ in plural(and for inanimate ones - in the only one):

v.p. units white house, leaf, robe; wine.p. plural: white houses, sheets, robes

v.p. units white planter, elephant, ghost; wine.p. plural: white planters, elephants, ghosts.

Thus, the traditional three genera correspond to six concordant classes:

• house– m.r. inanimate;
• elephant– m.r. soulful;
• wall– f.r. inanimate;
• goat - w.r. shower ;
• window - s.r. inanimate;
• monster– s.r. shower

About seventh grade, etc. pair gender see below(cm. ).

N. N. Durnovo (cf. [Durnovo 1924]), who was the first to actually introduce the concept of a concordant class, does not distinguish between the concepts of “gender” and “concordant class” and distinguishes 6 genders in the Russian language.

A. A. Zaliznyak considers gender as such pairs of concordant classes that differ only in the choice of indicators of the accusative case, dictated by animacy.

1.2. Diagnostic contexts of concordance

According to Zaliznyak, to diagnostic contexts for the genus of the concordant connection, in addition to the most common - attributive connection ( white house, white fortress), also applies to syntactic connections in the following types of phrases:

• predicative construction ( the house is white, the house is white):

(3) This space is infinite. There is nothing there except fog. [ABOUT. Efremova. The Story of a Suicide (2002)]

• selective designs (one of the houses, each of the houses):

(4) We can say that this is one of the symptoms, which is part of the symptom complex of rickets, but this symptom alone is not enough to diagnose the disease. [A. Razakova. First year and whole life (2002)]

(5) And suddenly one day I notice that in one of the bottles which I emptied the day before, for some reason there were about a hundred grams of vodka left. [F. Iskander. Pangs of conscience, or Bai's bed (1980-1990)]

• combinations with some numerals ( one and a half, both and numerals ending in one And two):

(6) Both these vector existed throughout the Soviet period. [L. Shpakovskaya. Old things. Value: between state and society (2004)]

(7) Dr. Watson held out both hands to the identikit and invited Sherlock Holmes to wave. [“ Information Technology"(2004)]

• constructions with certain verbs and adjectives in instrumental case(the adjective is governed by the verb, but agrees with the object in number and gender):

(8) I have never considered and do not I think the Comintern is sinless. [AND. V. Stalin. International situation and defense of the USSR (1927)]

(9) Does it scare you, dog, that I’m already rehearsing, but I myself consider the play unprepared? [A. Dmitriev. Phantom of the Theater (2002-2003)]

The agreement of a pronoun with the core noun (the term "congruence" is often used) is also diagnostic of gender:

(10) For example, I quilted a patchwork with my own hands for my granddaughter blanket, knowing that it will protect her and give her energy. ["Folk Art" (2004)]

1.3. Inconsistency between diagnostics of gender-numerical agreement

In a number of cases, diagnostics of gender-numerical agreement give different results: some of them are dictated by grammatical agreement, others by “agreement in meaning,” that is, by the gender of the referent. For example, the pronoun You (You) when addressing one person (polite You) requires an unambiguous plural in the verb: You have come, you will come(*came, *will come), however, adjectives, participles and adjective pronouns in the position of the predicate with it can (and in a number of contexts should) agree “in meaning”, in the singular and in the gender of the referent:

(11) Who you are like that? “I was going to the city,” the girl answered. [YU. O. Dombrovsky. The Monkey Comes for His Skull, Part 2 (1943-1958)] (*who are you)

(12) - I saw you. You are beautiful. I love those... graceful. [Elena Belkina. From love to hate (2002 [Alexander Terekhov. Stone Bridge (1997-2008)] (*You are beautiful.)

For short adjectives, unlike complete ones, agreement on the plural is not only not prohibited, but is also much more frequent than on the singular:

(13) - Sorry, but where can you see that are you pregnant? [Collection of jokes: transport (1970-2000)]

(14) She goes to the doctor: is it gastritis? And she said to her: “Yes You are pregnant" So she blurted out rudely. [I. Grekova. Fracture (1987)]

For words of a normatively masculine gender meaning female persons ( doctor, prime minister; see more details) it is possible to agree on the masculine gender ( our doctor, the prime minister said along with ours, stated), but coreferential pronouns in the masculine gender are impossible (about a woman it is impossible: the doctor came, *he said that...).

1.4. Concordant class and personality category

As A. A. Zaliznyak notes, if we consider the rule about the incompatibility of collective numerals ( two, three) with the names of animals (i.e., consider combinations of the type to be grammatically incorrect two cows, three hares), one can distinguish a concordant class in the Russian language depending not only on animation, but also on personality [Zaliznyak 1967:70]. From a typological point of view, personality is a grammatical category that contrasts the designations of people with the designations of all other objects. In this case, the designations of people ( two writers, three soldiers) in their compatibility would be opposed to the designations of animals and objects.

Let us add to this that the rules noted in the literature about the inadmissibility of combining collective numerals with designations for women ( two girls) and/or tall people social status (two kings, two generals) would give a different boundary of the concordant class, highlighting the “personal-male”, “personal-low-status” class or combinations thereof.

However, in reality, combinations of the form two girls, seven kings, three birds with one stone in Russian are allowed (see Numerals).

2. Morphology

2.1. Word-classifying gender: indicators of morphological gender

In the Russian language there is a strong correlation between the gender of a noun and its inflection pattern. Thus, most feminine nouns end in im.p. units on -A and belong to the a-declension (fox, bathhouse) either a soft consonant or any sibilant (spelling -ь) and belong to the third declension ( notebook, rye, thing), masculine - to a consonant and belong to the second declension (wolf, horse, pencil), average – on - o/-e and belong to the second declension ( village, sea). The correspondence of individual inflectional types and gender can be absolute; so, all words of the third declension (by type steppe) feminine [Plungyan 2000].

In [Otkupshchikova, Fitialov 1964] (following them in [Zaliznyak 1967]), the types of paradigms characteristic of most masculine, feminine and neuter nouns are called masculine, feminine and neuter morphological genera. The morphological gender may not coincide with the concordant gender. So the words man or Thomas– feminine morphological, but masculine concordant gender, and journeyman– average morphological, but masculine concordant gender.

Without information about the type of inflection, the choice of gender according to the form of the im.p. often difficult (cf. shadow And day, reed And mouse), however, with the help of characteristic suffixes (for example, - tel for m.r. And -ness for zh.r.) the vast majority of nouns in their original form allows us to determine the morphological gender [Muchnik 1971].

According to [Zaliznyak 1967], morphological nouns are masculine 40.5%, feminine - 43%, neuter - 16.5% (based on 47,700 lexemes).

2.1.1. Discrepancies between morphological and agreement gender

Discrepancies between morphological and syntactic gender concern a limited number of nouns; however, a number of such words are high in frequency. Thus, the first thousand frequency Russian words (according to [Sharov, Lyashevskaya 2009]) include the words man(416th), dad(843rd), the word is close to a thousand uncle(1128th).

2.1.1.1. Female morphological genus

The female morphological gender is normatively treated

• a series of ancient non-productive animate masculine nouns (youth, servant, elder, man, judge);
• hypocoristic (“diminutive”) male names like Vasya,Kolya;
• nouns with productive augmentative suffixes -in- (Cossack, domina) and more expressive -yar-(volchara, dozhdar, popyara), inheriting the gender of the generating word (Cossack, house, wolf, rain, pop);
• animate nouns with diminutive suffixes like boy, lad, rogue, also inheriting the genus of the original ( boy, lad, rogue):

(15) Battle Mage - stern bearded kid - played with a transparent ball in which bluish lightning danced. [D. Yemets. Tanya Grotter and the Well of Poseidon (2004)]

(16) You won’t be able to find out anything. Kotyara to you messed up. [IN. Belousova. Second Shot (2000)]

For words with suffix -in type domina(with homophonic variants of the neuter morphological gender type domino) is characterized by variability of the concordant kind (see). Words starting with - A can act as common nouns (see).

2.1.1.2. Average morphological genus

The average morphological genus normatively includes:

• few masculine nouns journeyman or funnel, nest(designations of horse colors, which can also act as nicknames):

(17) Old funnel! I saw how a tear broke through you, I saw how your fleshy lips trembled, I heard your sigh, with which it seemed that you begged your leaders not to harness you to the root, for the place belongs not to you, but bay! [M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Satires in prose (1859-1862)]

(18) words with suffixes -searching- And -ishk- (house, little house), inheriting the gender of the generating word:

(19) In the kitchen of the guard company he received a bag of rye loaves, stocked up full can drinking water. [ABOUT. Pavlov. Karaganda nineties, or the Tale last days (2001)]

(20) She was in that apartment, overlooking flimsy little balcony… [G. Shcherbakova. Angel of the Dead Lake (2002)]

Outside the literary norm, some of these classes exhibit fluctuations between neuter and feminine morphological gender.

According to [Zaliznyak 1967] (see also [Graudina et al. 1976:74–75], [Grammatika 1980(1):486], [Voeykova 2008:119]), inanimate nouns with suffixes -in- gravitate towards a mixed morphological genus (saw this dom O / ??? dom at , But with this dom Ouch / ??? dom ohm) or to a change in the type of agreement (my red-skinned passport - Mayakovsky ), and animate ones with suffixes -searching- And -ishk-– to female ( I saw this bull, there is not a single house):

(21) I’ve seen so many dog-catchers! and in the form of shells, and parodying the Russian folk hut and somewhat similar to a pagoda. Even double decker saw domino! (ann-sanni.livejournal.com)

(22) It went to another corner, picked up huge my coat. [A. Eppel. Sitting in the Dark on Viennese Chairs (1993)]

East Slavic surnames in -ko (Rodzianko, Shevchenko) in the 19th century, as well as in modern vernacular, they are inclined either according to the neuter morphological gender (as in Ukrainian: Rodziankom, Shevchenkom), or feminine (as in Belarusian: Rodzianka, Shevchenko). The literary norm prescribes the indeclinability of these surnames:

(23) As a result of this request of mine, what had to happen from me, the nobleman Ivan Nikiforov’s son Dovgochkhun, together with the nobleman Ivan Ivanov’s son Perepenkom; to which the Povetovy Mirgorod Court itself expressed its connivance. [N. V. Gogol. The story of how Ivan Ivanovich quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich (1835-1841)]

(24) He proved something, joked, discussed the new, young and energetic General Secretary with a spot on his head, went to a meeting with a shabby Yevtushenka, sitting in an embroidered Russian shirt next to little Nika Turbina and looking at everyone sullenly and angrily. [A. Varlamov. Kupavna (2000)]

Similar fluctuations (between neuter and feminine morphological genders and indeclinability) are also characteristic of Slavic forms of names like Yarilo, Sadko(pre-Christian) or Mikhailo,Ivanko,Danilo(Christian):

(25) The key keeper reports to his master, who ordered the grain to be withheld from the peasants who announced they were leaving him, that Ivanka three boxes were selected. [IN. L. Yanin. I sent you birch bark... (1975)]

(26) Then (the master) called Danilo and he himself explained the new rent to him. Danilo sees - it’s completely absurd [P. P. Bazhov. Fragile Twig (1940)]

(27) And look: our Mirabeau Old Gavrilo For a crumpled frill, it whips you in the mustache and snout. [D. V. Davydov. Modern Song: (1836)]

2.1.1.3 Masculine morphological gender

The masculine morphological gender includes expressive designations of female persons formed from words of the feminine morphological gender (except woman, only proper names are actually used) using a number of suffixes: woman from woman, Mashkin from Masha, Natusik from Natusya, Lenok from Lena, Shurik from Shura(last thing - general kind(cm. )):

(28) And almost all nouns acquired the ending in etz: instead of baba - woman, instead of a frog - frog, instead of a tavern - tavern. [P. D. Boborykin. Memoirs (1906-1913)]

These words fluctuate between masculine and feminine consonant gender (for woman more frequent than masculine - 10 examples versus 2, for proper names - feminine, for example, for Lenok -- 5 vs 1):

(29) High lunar moon. AND sleeping woman. [IN. Makanin. Inadequate (2002)]

(30) And I don’t understand why this is so experienced(to say the least) woman so he twitches, flickers, jitters, dances on the dance floor. [A. Parsnip. Sonya the Garbage (Memories of a Dead Man) (2002)]

(31) Lenok never called The boss by name and patronymic, unless, of course, he was nearby [E. Proshkin. Evacuation (2002)]

2.1.2. Adaptation of foreign borrowings

Foreign inflected borrowings in most cases do not copy the gender of the source language. Declined nouns choose gender based on morphological gender (for example, masculine words organon, council in Greek and Latin Middle, slogan– in German feminine). Indeclinables gravitate toward the neuter gender (with the exception of designations for living beings like kangaroo; cm. ).

2.2. Pluralia tantum as "paired genus"

Pluralia tantum - nouns that do not have a singular form - are traditionally classified as phenomena related to number rather than gender.

However, in [Zaliznyak 1967] it is proposed to consider them as a special concordant class(see paragraph 1) (inanimate: I see new sleighs), which corresponds to the special fourth genus – paired gender Forms pluralia tantum, meaning related to a single object, like one sleigh, one of these sleighs are considered unit forms. h., homonymous plural:

(32) And this is impossible given the decisive predominance of such two fundamental attitudes of the Indian (although far from exclusively Indian) worldview as monism and atomism, which are like two blades some scissors personal theology and anthropology are completely cut off. [History of Eastern Philosophy (1998)]

Unlike the three traditional genders, the paired gender does not include an animate concordant class (see). However, A. A. Zaliznyak theoretically allows for the identification of a class that would include the words white And black like the names of sides in chess and similar games. Wed. accusative case form, proving the animation of the word white:

(33) After the correct 35…Rf6! winnings for white can not see. [E. Bareev. The quality of draws and their quantity (2004)]

This does not apply to notations political parties (white, red, green), which also have a singular number.

There is no special morphological pairing; words of paired gender are distributed into three morphological genders. So, watch belongs to the masculine morphological gender (hours) like a word hour; scissors And trousers- to the feminine (scissors - scissors, trousers - trousers, Wed pages - pages, pieces - pieces); gates And firewood– to the average (gate - gate, firewood - firewood, Wed swamps – swamps, words - words), about plural forms opposed by morphological gender. cm. clause 2.6.1.4(cm.).

Historically, pluralia tantum forms had a plural concordant gender, which was preserved in writing until the reform of 1918 (see. clause 2.6.1.1) Many of them are associated with lost or semantically specified singular forms. ( spirit - perfume, hour - clock).

2.3. Common gender

The lexicographic tradition, in addition to three main genera, also distinguishes the so-called common gender. It includes animate nouns denoting persons (often also animals), depending on the gender of the designated person, which are either feminine or masculine:

(34) Dmitry Kharatyan was not a blockhead, but simply inquisitive fidget. [N. Sklyarov. Cossacks-robbers (2002)]

(35) And yet Moscow, with its never-ending study, dull music-playing, corrosive governesses, and the heavy burden of going to concerts, turned out to be for restless fidget- a true daredevil in a skirt - unbearable. [N. Nikitina. Chapters from the book about Alexandra Lvovna Tolstoy (2002)]

(36) There, in a dense thicket of young alders, aspens, birches and fir trees, a thieving magpie was sitting at her nest... There she thrust her prey to the chicks and - restless - immediately flew away somewhere again. [IN. V. Bianchi. There were forest tales (1923-1958)]

There are about 200 words of the general kind [Muchnik 1971], [Graudina et al. 1976:76–77], [Iomdin 1980]. They belong to the female morphological genus. Semantically, most of these words are associated with negative characteristics (drunkard, incompetent, bully, picky) or objective shortcomings ( orphan, cripple).

The interpretation of the general gender depends on whether to see one or two lexemes for each of these words. If we consider word forms that agree on the feminine and masculine genders like orphan representing one lexeme, then such words are allocated to a special concordant class (according to A. A. Zaliznyak - crossed). An interpretation is also possible, in which in each of these cases two homonymous lexemes of different kinds are represented in the language. With any interpretation, such words do not form an independent concordant class with its own set of endings.

2.3.1. Derivative types

A number of paired gender words contain characteristic expressive (often pejorative) suffixes -ak-(a), -l-(a), -(in)a, -yag(a), -yg(a), -uk(a), -ul(ya), -ush(a) and etc.: bully, imagined, greedy, modest, badass, mean, neat, scoundrel.

Formations of the feminine morphological gender from nouns of the masculine morphological gender can also act as words of general gender (see. clause 2.1.1. Female morphological genus):

(37) Such a wolf caught - he clings to every cent with his teeth. [Semyon Danilyuk. Business Class (2003)]

(38) Ogurtsov was not alone - some beauty remained sitting in the car, looking boredly to the side and, on the third phrase of the conversation, was certified in a low voice by Ogurtsov as " my wolf". [Andrey Volos. Real estate (2000) // New world, № 1-2, 2001]

This also includes hypocoristic (“diminutive”) names, equally formed from male name on a consonant and a female name on - A: Sasha(< Alexander, Alexandra), Shura, Valya, Zhenya.

A special class consists of nouns ending in - lo, sometimes attributed by researchers to the general genus [Graudina et al. 1976:76], but much more often agreed upon by the neuter gender (in accordance with the morphological genus). It is important to note that they also have a homophonic variant of the feminine morphological gender ( fooled And made a fool, bastard And bastard):

(39) They were afraid to make him laugh, but it was clear to everyone that he was a fake detective, even if such a weirdo, like Kurchev, he even darned him. [IN. Kornilov. Demobilization (1969-1971)]

(40) So, I went back and forth, I couldn’t stop, I kept looking for some honest bank, hoping for something else, cardboard fool… [A. Grachev. Yary-3. Death Warrant (2000)]

(41) She sounds so that from a young age she is incredibly loud, in the roar of thoughts and feelings with which she lives young fool, point-blank you can’t see or hear the quiet or subsiding life of your elders. [G. Shcherbakova. Army of Lovers (1997)]

Verb agreement with these expressive markings is rare:

(42) Pulling the backbone of the samolov tightly, the fish did not go deeper, but went forward to the guard, lashing the water and the boat with torn knees, plugs, hooks, dragging crumpled, crumpled sterlets in a heap, shaking them off the samolov. " Stop being a fool air. I’m getting carried away!” - Ignatyich thought, instantly picking up the slack of the fishing rod and saw a fish near the side of the boat. [Victor Astafiev. King Fish (1974)]

2.3.2. Semantic Negotiation

Profession designation judge– also of a general kind:

(43) Little red judge loved only Vetrov. They met during the shaggy times of Nonna's student years in an unknown year. [D. Simonova. Ghost of the Decor (2002)]

Wed. less frequent use of the word servant as a generic word:

(44) She is my mistress and my servant. [N. G. Chernyshevsky. What to do? (1863)]

(45) In my subordination there was, however, one woman- servant- black Olga, our maid. [E. Limonov. The Book of Water (2002)] (note the use of the word woman, indicating the default application of the word servant to the male gender)

Words of general gender become closer to words of the masculine morphological gender of the type doctor, minister, normatively related to the masculine concordant gender, but also denoting female persons; As one of the coordination options, it is possible for them to agree “by meaning” (and not just by the masculine gender), see.

The transition of words of the general gender into the feminine gender in relation to a man is quite common (cf. also [Graudina et al. 1976:76]):

(46) - Ivan Gavrilych, although rare bore, consider it a strategic banking partner in Europe. [WITH. Danilyuk. Business Class (2003)]

(47) He was lucky with him, which cannot be said about Yuri Ignatievich, the chief deputy, old, bald bore... [E. Volodarsky. Suicide Diary (1997)].

2.4. Gender and concordant class of pronouns-nouns.

2.4.1. Personal and reflexive pronouns

Part of pronoun-nouns ( I, you, we, you are one of us, one of you) can be agreed upon in feminine and masculine genders ( I came, I came) and thus belong to several concordant classes at the same time (or “crossed” classes according to Zaliznyak). Pragmatically, it is less natural, but nevertheless, agreement on the neuter gender is possible:

(48) – I got drunk seventy-five stray dogs. Twenty-eight cats and cats. – The cloud cried more and more. -- I cried out all the water. [WITH. Prokofiev. Patchwork and Cloud]

(49) How come you got there, my child? [B. Ekimov. Stories (2002)]

The reflexive pronoun is structured similarly. myself: Wed yourself And yourself/yourself.

Pronouns he she it have male, female and neuter gender accordingly (by agreement; cf. also), but not determined by animation:

(50) Now that the public has had enough of Vysotsky’s tune and it has become possible to read it's all, the enthusiastic cries about the suffering genius fell silent. [IN. Astafiev. Zatesi (1999)]

(51) I looked at the old house. I saw all of him. From rickety antennas to chipped porch steps. [WITH. Dovlatov. Road to new apartment (1987)]

For the designation of animate nouns of the neuter gender, both forms coinciding with the nominative case and forms coinciding with the genitive case are possible. Thus, in the neuter gender, animation is less expressed than in the masculine and feminine:

(52) His everything covered with wool. // There are only covered with wool. (about an animal)

2.4.2. Pronouns like Who And What

Pronouns series -Who(who, no one, no one etc.) – masculine, animate; plural allowed with restrictions ( *who came?, But who are they, these people).

In design who it modern norm requires agreement such within the meaning of ( who is this, such, such), however there was also an archaic inconsistent construction who is this:

(53) [Rakitin:] Who is Belyaev? [Islaev:] And our new teacher, Russian. [AND. S. Turgenev. A Month in the Country (1850)]

Mn. h. Who often found in relative usage, such as in the Corpus those who came occurs comparable to those who came(ratio approximately 1:5). In the 1970s, according to [Graudin and. others 1976:31–32], pl. occurred in approximately 3% of contexts.

(54) Who has encountered the cloning of their nickname? I've already caught four unidentified clones. I wonder for what purpose these "someone" use my nickname is? (otvet.mail.ru)

(55) Art salon 2006 in the Central House of Artists. Who was at an art salon? What did you see? [Contemporary art (forum) (2007)] (we are talking about a plural subject)

(56) Girls, who took the passenger’s seat at the emergency exit? [TO. Kondakov. Two steps forward, one and a half steps back (2003)] (we are talking about one of the “girls”)

Contexts like:

(57) Who was this girl who was this grandfather? [A. Arkhangelsk. 1962. Epistle to Timothy (2006)]

should be interpreted as consistent with the subject (“girl”, cf. Who was this girl).

Pronouns series -What(what, nothing, something etc.) – neuter singular, inanimate:

(58) He explained to me: when we die, we cease to exist as living beings. This biological nothingness. Chemical nothingness- Torricelli void, you can get a space in which not a single molecule remains. [D. Granin. Bison (1987)]

2.5 Variation in genus

Variability of gender affiliation is characteristic of a number of lexemes and their classes throughout the history of the Russian literary language. The work [Savchuk 2011] summarizes the following points of variability associated with gender:

· fluctuations in gender, expressed morphologically ():

§ noun m.r. to a hard consonant and zh.r. to -a: rail - rail (

§ noun to a soft consonant, -zh, -sh: m.r.//zh.r.: roofing felt, roofing felt – roofing felt, roofing felts();

§ noun with suffixes of subjective assessment: m.r.//sr.r., m.r.//zh.r., sr.r.//zh.r.: this little house is a little house, a huge domina - a huge domina, a small bucket - a small bucket ().

§ noun general kind: this weirdo - this weirdo;

· fluctuations in gender, expressed syntactically (see,):

§ noun adamant: fluffy boa – fluffy boa();

§ abbreviations: our housing office – our housing office, ESR increased – ESR increased ();

§ composites: alarm clock went up – alarm clock rose ().

2.5.1. Fluctuations between types of inflection

Variation in syntactic gender is usually associated with fluctuations between morphological genders: slipper - slipper, toast - toast, dahlia - dahlia, pickle - pickle, piano/pianos - piano/piano[Graudina et al. 1976:65–70]. Usually, options for three genders differ in the standard endings of the three corresponding morphological genders (-0, -а, -о) up to a fluent vowel (cf. the first two examples) or are homonymous in the initial form (words like piano). Rare, but other options are possible (for example, saiga - saiga, bunch - bunch), cf. Also hangnail - hangnail with different vowels of the suffix. Variation between paired and other genera is common (in most examples it is a choice between pluralia and singularia tantum; lace - lace, grain procurement - grain procurement, milk - milk, thicket - thicket).

(59) F.A. Petrovsky assured that in his youth he saw a hairdresser with the inscriptions: “ men's room», « women's hall», « children's room" [M. L. Gasparov. Records and extracts (1998)]

2.5.1.1 Fluctuations between the 0-declension and the a-declension (masculine - feminine)

According to the Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language (analysis from [Savchuk 2011]), the fluctuations between the masculine 0-declension and the a-declension (hard version) and, accordingly, the masculine and feminine gender (such as rail - rail) accounts for 37% of variable pairs.

A separate morphological (word-formative) class of words that fluctuate between masculine and feminine genders - prefix formations from verbs (clearing - clearing, perevolok - perevolok, duct - duct, suckers - sucker, gouge - gouge).

(60) The road to Shulpikha went first to the old abandoned clearing(in the Urals they say “ clearing", but not clearing), and then we turned left, where the mowing began. [D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak. Green Mountains (1902)]

Adaptation of borrowed words also causes similar variability, which is also associated with the type of source language: diaeresis - diaeresis(Greek dieresis feminine), arabesque/arabesque(French arabesque feminine), giraffe - giraffe(French giraffe is feminine; cf. also above about the variability of animal names).

(61) As it turned out, giraffe served hat stand. [WITH. Dovlatov. Ours (1983)]

Fluctuation in gender is characteristic of words that are rarely used in the singular: these are the names of shoes ( slipper/slipper with normal slippers, keda - keda with normal sneakers, boot - boot, shoes - shoe), food (toast – crouton with normal croutons, pancakes - pancakes with normal pancakes), other semantic classes ( candelabra - candelabra, key - key, rail - rail, haystack - haystack, shutter - shutter, burr - burr, tubercule - tubercule, banknote - banknote).

As noted in [Savchuk 2011], a number of variable forms in modern texts are falling out of use ( shoe– this word in modern texts is applied not to women’s shoes, but to men’s shoes, including heavy ones; apotheosis, keychain). The preferred form may be different within the same semantic group: in a pair boots – boot(the ratio of forms is 5 m.r. singular // 12 zh.r. singular with 71 plural forms) the feminine gender predominates, and in the pair sneaker – sneaker male (the ratio of forms is 14 m.r. units // 3 gender units with 202 plural forms).

2.5.1.2. Oscillations between 2 types of 0-declension (masculine and feminine)

Variation between the masculine and feminine genders is historically characteristic of borrowed nouns with a soft consonant, fluctuating between two types of 0-declension and, accordingly, morphological genders (quadrille, hotel, duel); Currently, for most of these words, one of the genders has been fixed, and variability in this zone has decreased, although it has not completely disappeared. If in the Grammar Dictionary only 22 pairs with such a fluctuation are noted (and only 13% of words that are variable by gender), then at the beginning of the 20th century, normative manuals note another 55 such pairs, which are no longer relevant for the modern language [Savchuk 2011].

(62) Imagine some chevalier, count, marquis, who has in Paris it was a wonderful hotel, several hereditary castles, in order not to die of hunger, he had to become a tutor, that is, a teacher! [M.N. Zagoskin. Moscow and Muscovites (1842-1850)]

(63) Three days later he was last duel. [M.A. Corf. Note about Pushkin (1848)]

(64) Goes to the government permanent square dance, on the one hand, in order to one by one place more Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks “in the pie” of profitable and honorable places, on the other hand, in order to “occupy the attention” of the people. [IN AND. Lenin. State and Revolution (1917)]

In a number of variable pairs there was previously a variant with a hard masculine consonant:

(65) It has been proven that a prism, the base of which is a parallelogram, is divided into two trilateral identical planes passing through diagonals bases, and like the sides of a parallelogram and diagonal can be taken completely arbitrarily, it follows that every three-sided prism is equal in size to another whose base and height are the same. [N.I. Lobachevsky. Geometry (1823)]

In the history of the language, they changed their gender and a number of original nouns to a soft consonant: degree, larynx, seal and etc.

(66) And this is the highest degree perfection that one must strive to achieve. [Catherine II. Order of the Commission on the drafting of a new Code (1767)]

Among new words, such variability is associated with words meaning substances ( gel, shampoo, salt and etc.). In [Savchuk 2011] the variability associated with the animate word was first noted mediocrity(originally – third declension of the Russian birth):

(67) It’s even more scary when a gifted person is doing this. After all mediocrity no one will listen. And when a talented person preaches vileness, a child can believe him. [A. Gulina. Hearing for someone else's pain (2003)] – masculine

(68) AYA mutters to her eating vegetables: “This is our world: any mediocrity, any slaughtered ram depicts the heights and the abyss, banging on a tin drum.” [IN. Aksenov. New sweet style (2005)] – feminine

2.5.1.3. Suffix formations with changes in morphological gender

Fluctuations in gender between masculine (in accordance with the gender of the generating word) and feminine (in accordance with morphological gender) also have nouns with augmentative and expressive suffixes, the morphological gender of which does not correspond to the normative concordant (see. clause 2.1 Morphological genus, clause 2.3 General gender). These are nouns as inanimate ( forehead, brick, cold, rain, passport etc.) and animate ( beast, animal, horse, woman, Lenok, mediocrity). They often also fluctuate between different morphological genera (little man-little man, shed - shed).

2.5.2. Unchangeable words and abbreviations

Borrowed unchangeable nouns (including proper names), which are not adjacent to any original inflectional paradigm, are characterized by variability in gender affiliation, which often changes over time. According to [Graudina et al. 1976:77], in the press of the 1970s, deviations from the dictionary norm in the gender of indeclinable nouns reached 35%. According to [Savchuk 2011], the share of indeclinable words among gender-variant nouns is 32%.

2.5.2.1. Gender of unchangeable words and semantics

Usually, indeclinable inanimate nouns tend to be neuter (the neuter morphological gender is characterized by the ending -o/-e); This is also the so-called “dump class”, which includes words with the ending imI.p, which is atypical for the Russian language. units like -u, -i[Kopeliovich 2008:99]. Along with this tendency, gender is often assigned to such words according to their semantic analogue: for example, indeclinable designations for cars belong to the masculine gender (like the word automobile), river Congo- to the feminine gender, as river, and the state Congo– to the average, as state(but in principle, at the same time, substitution of feminine words is also possible - a country or republic, so such a rule cannot be absolute).

2.5.2.2. Names of inanimate objects

According to the Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language, designations for food and drinks fluctuate between the masculine and neuter genders (coffee, brandy, whiskey, martini, spaghetti, sherry, suluguni, chili), car brands ( Ferrari, Chevrolet, Audi, Volvo), units of measurement and monetary units (henry, curie, euro). Almost all of these words are represented in the Corpus, mainly in the masculine gender. According to Google, combined one/one euro The masculine gender is 17 times more common than the neuter gender, in combination white/white martini The masculine gender is almost 100 times more common than the average gender.

Vehicle designations stand out in particular; here, both in the Corpus and on the Internet, for a number of such words the feminine gender, not noted in dictionaries, is in the lead (dictated by semantic analogues car, brand, foreign car, model[Savchuk 2011], and not literary automobile). So, new ferrari on Google is approximately twice as frequent as new ferrari, while the neuter gender recommended by a number of dictionaries for this lexeme is extremely marginal.

(69) She no longer saw white « Audi" ahead. [D. Rubina. A Few Hasty Words of Love (2001)]

(70) Order to all vehicles: block red « Maserati" [IN. Levashov. Patriot Conspiracy (2000)]

According to [Savchuk 2011], the masculine gender is preferred by names Chevrolet, Renault, Peugeot, Porsche, while the feminine gender for names strongly predominates Audi And Volvo. It is noted that words with the last unstressed open syllable, which can be associated with unstressed ending nouns of the 1st declension" [ibid].

In some cases, the choice of genus is explained by a long tradition. That's the word coffee, inheriting the masculine gender of an earlier variant coffee male morphological gender [Graudina 1976:79]; its transition to the neuter gender was recognized as normative by V.I. Chernyshev [ibid]. During the Soviet period, the masculine gender of this word began to be perceived as more “prestigious”, as a sign of “culture of speech,” which contributed to the additional conservation of the masculine gender. With words cocoa, coat or metro, in the XIX – early XX centuries. also having a masculine gender, this did not happen. At the same time, in the Russian emigration the masculine gender of the word coffee was easily replaced by the middle one:

(71) Clairville, finishing his drink morning coffee, with an energetic look, outlined his plan of action: he would first rush to the Ministry, to the Intelligence Service, to the headquarters, then find Mr. Blackwood and ask him to talk to the Minister. [M.A. Aldanov. The Cave (1932)]

(72) I also spent this time in Paris: a little less quantity of some products, slightly worse quality of others, counterfeit, but still aromatic coffee, slightly reduced electricity, slightly reduced gas use. [YU. P. Annenkov. Diary of My Encounters (1966)]

Also with Bunin, Nabokov, Andrei Sedykh, Don Aminado, M. Ageev.

(73) A sharp turn, and the car, rustling along the gravel highway, passed a wide gate topped with a trumpeting angel, and stopped near the armory building, scaring away a whole flock of young girls playing serso. [A.V. Chayanov. The Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia (1920)]

In modern language influenced coffee The masculine gender also received new borrowings, meaning varieties of this drink ( cappuccino, espresso); word mocha had also an outdated version mocha(fluctuating by gender and inclination) [Savchuk 2011]).

Words blinds, khinkali, spaghetti, muesli etc. and toponyms, for example, Caucasian, on - And type Ozurgeti, Kobuleti, Samashki, Shawls, Also Helsinki(cf. in the language of Russian emigration in Passy from Passy) fluctuate between masculine, neuter and paired (pluralia tantum) gender (in the latter case usually feminine morphological gender). The last possibility is suggested by the final -And, as well as for some words semantics (a set of small objects) and synonyms ( curtains, pasta– the last word passed a similar path, from it. macaroni), and for toponyms - the existence of toponyms of a paired gender of the type Romny And Cockerels(cf. foreign toponym Thessaloniki, normatively paired gender). Blinds and toponyms in paired gender have an inflected version: blinds, Shaley, Ozurget. The transition to a variable type is associated with the degree of mastery. In all these cases, the indeclinable version predominates, but the indeclinable ones also occur quite systematically:

(74) Spaghetti“More, please,” Pashka kept repeating. - If you don't have it in the closet, we have a reserve. [WITH. Kaledin. Notes of a Grave Digger (1987–1999)]

(75) Let's say another of my many friends fed her husband solid muesli, sausages and black coffee (if he remembered to buy all this), but he has remained with her for ten years and has no plans to leave. [M. Kaminarskaya. Three Merry Soups (2002)]

(76) Such catchy names were especially loved in the Georgian province, somewhere in Ozurgetakh, Akhalkalaki or Sagarejo (K. G. Paustovsky. Book about life)

(77) Instead of slit gills blinds― the dull click of the shutter. [WITH. D. Krzhizhanovsky. Side branch (1927-1928)], cf. :

(78) Bars are closed, cafes are closed. The windows of the houses are closed blinds. [YES. Granin. Upside Down Month (1966)]

2.5.2.3. Animal names

Animal designations fluctuate between masculine and feminine genders (koala, collie, okapi, dingo, gray, guanaco, chow-chow, kangaroo, tsetse- Wed semantically motivating feminine words dog, monkey, antelope, fly, masculine -- parrot and etc.):

(79) The rat kangaroo is much smaller than the first, but in everything similar to common kangaroo. [F.F. Bellingshausen. Double surveys in the Southern Arctic Ocean... (1831)]

Wed. also B. Zhitkov’s story “Kangaroo” (1925), where this word (in the speech of the character and narrator) is translated into the feminine morphological gender, apparently under the influence of an ending similar to the accusative case of this paradigm (cf. the previous example):

(80) The manager came out into the middle and said: “Now, for the most respectable public, the Australian beast kangaroo will show you a boxing exercise. A rare case of art! (B. Zhitkov. Kangaroo)

Word chimpanzee in [Zaliznyak 1967] it is classified as a “crossed” inflectional class, showing signs of all three genders - masculine, feminine and neuter (in it the common gender and the variability between the common and neuter gender intersect). In the Corpus, the neuter gender of this word is not recorded, and the choice of masculine or feminine, as far as one can judge, is not motivated by the gender of the animal: cf. examples where we are talking about a biological species as a whole:

(81) Not so close, it turns out, a relative to us this hairy chimpanzee! ["Knowledge is power" (2003)]

(82) Newborn chimpanzee weighs half as much as a newborn baby. ["Murzilka" (2000)]

2.5.2.4. Type of abbreviations

Similar to the names of animals, the genus of abbreviations is determined - according to the so-called reference word full transcript(syntactically to the main word of the phrase). Regulatory BAM female ( highway), USA– paired ( states), NKVD– male ( commissariat). However, in this case, too, there is a noticeable tendency for indeclinable abbreviations to agree on the neuter gender (and those resembling the masculine morphological gender in their phonetic structure, such as BAM– to agreement on masculine gender and inclination):

(83) On the site of the Molochov Gate, where in Patriotic War In 1812 there were fierce battles, the all-powerful NKVD has built two residential buildings for the families of their guardsmen, who were most successful in the forests of Katyn. [B. Vasiliev. Look Back Midway (2003)]

(84) If the minister wants to pay for the diversion of Siberian rivers - please, he will want to build it for no one the right BAM- as much as you like, provide foreign exchange assistance to the Communist Party in Cuba - no questions asked! [A. Tarasov. Millionaire (2004)]

A series of consonant abbreviations, starting with NEP(new economic policy) normatively adopted the masculine gender, and often moved from indeclinable to indeclinable, even before the 1970s ( Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Wed ministry, Higher Attestation Commission- Wed commission, university - Wed establishment, TASS – Wed agency, DOSAAF – Wed society, registry office- Wed recording; in the 1970s this process began with Housing office- Wed office; [Graudina et al. 1976:83–84]). Wed. a rare example of transition Housing office into the feminine morphological gender:

(85) - Technician - these are at home, in your office, and here is the caretaker, caretaker of the cemetery. [WITH. Kaledin. Notes of a Grave Digger (1987-1999)]

and a rare example of preserving the inflexibility of a word marriage registry in the masculine:

(86) Service capital registry office summed up its results for 2006 and compared them with the indicators of the previous year. [N. Egorsheva. SASHA + NASTYA (2007)]

2.5.3. Gender of compound words

A special type of oscillation is Difficult words, formed by juxtaposing words of two different genders: raincoat, sofa bed, boarding school. The variability of the gender is combined with the variability of the declension of the first part (raincoat-tents or raincoat). For a number of such words, the indeclinability of the first part and, accordingly, agreement on the last part of the composite predominates, the morphological gender of which is inherited by the word as a whole:

(87) People were crowding in the dugout all the time, the door creaked and slammed cloak-tent, hanged at the entrance by Glushkov. [IN. Grossman. Life and Fate, Part 2 (1960)]

For the word invoice the inclination of both parts predominates; the inflexible first part is rare, although regular, especially in the newspaper corpus, which suggests an evolution in this direction:

(88) Thus, the Supreme Arbitration Court of the Russian Federation, considering a specific case, on the basis of a transport agreement, check-invoices, invoices and other documents established that the transportation was carried out across the territories of several states. [Some problems of the subject of proof in civil proceedings of the Russian Federation (2003)]

It is possible to agree on both parts:

(89) Based on this account-textures the former seller who became the buyer will deduct VAT on the purchased goods. [A. Kurkotov. Return Invoice (2004)]

(90) The idea is to each account-texture I found myself a “seller-buyer” pair, and the amounts for both should match. [E. Lenz. Ministry of Subtraction and Replenishment (2004)] (in this text the first part is declined)

For hyphenated combinations of words of various kinds, meaning persons ( boy-woman, man of mystery, would-be writer), usually semantic agreement [Graudina et al. 1976:91]:

(91) Moreover, “ fire-girl» offered also print laudatory quotes about Golovin, which are also attached. [T. Ustinova. Personal Angel (2002)]

The variability is more pronounced in free combinations of inanimate nouns of different genders, the second of which acts as an application (they can also be considered as occasional compound words).

Normatively, agreement on the first part, which is semantically “main” ( amphibious aircraft m.r. = amphibious aircraft, [Graudina et al. 1976:92]), although this semantic basis is quite “shaky” [ibid], in addition, there is variability in the order of the components: estate-museum And museum-estate.

Agreement may also depend on which side of a given pair the word being agreed upon is located on. Wed. Examples of agreement based on the nearest noun:

(92) This scheme can be considered a modification of the linear one, since its essence lies in the fact that in every episode-meeting the subject and object can be arbitrarily chosen characters. ["Information Technology" (2004)]

(93) First, lightly compact the seam with a hammer, then stamp on it lock-groove, called“zig”, which will prevent the seam from diverging during further compaction. ["Folk Art" (2004)]

but cf. agreement with the first part during postposition:

(94) Later it was discovered that short synthetic double-stranded RNAs, one of the chains of which is complementary to any part gene-targets and correspondingly, his mRNA has an even more powerful effect, completely and strictly selectively inactivating the expression of this gene in animal cells, including mammals. [A. S. Spirin. Fundamental science and problems of environmental safety (2004)]

(95) You won’t believe it, but this-worldly audience applauded almost standing - not so much for this person, but for the director who filmed movie-silence, movie-immobility, movie-emptiness, employee the measure of every sound, every movement, every fullness. [LiveJournal Entry (2004)]

2.6. Gender of agreed words

Actually, grammatical indicators of gender (except for the regular formation of gender in substantivized adjectives and surnames; see below) in the Russian language are found only in word forms to which gender is assigned upon agreement - adjectives, adjective pronouns, numerals and participles of the verb. They're close here l- forms (word forms of the past tense of the verb and as part of the subjunctive mood).

Gender is marked in adjectival word forms cumulatively with indicators of case and singular (in the plural, except for the cases indicated above, gender is not marked), and in the accusative case also animacy. Okay, ending th The adjective expresses, in addition to the masculine gender, the nominative case (or inanimate accusative) and the singular. Indirect cases of masculine and neuter genders coincide (red sun, house, red sun, house).

There are a number of case-generic indicators characteristic of:

• For full forms adjectives, pronoun-adjectives and participles ( th, -oh, oh in im.p.: good th house, good and I book, good her composition);
• for short forms of adjectives and participles (- 0 , -a, -o: gender only, except phraseological units barefoot and so on.: the house is good, the book is good, the essay is good);
• for possessive adjectives (- 0 , -a, -o in im.p.: Petin house, Petin A book, Petin O essay - the house is good (Petin), the book is good (Petina), the essay is good (Petino).

U - l-form indicators of gender and number coincide with the indicators of short forms of adjectives ( saw, saw A, saw O, saw And ).

2.6.1. Gender and number

2.6.1.1. Pre-reform spelling

After the spelling reform of 1918, the overwhelming majority of Russian word forms do not differ in plural gender in writing (phonetically, the coincidence of genders and the formation of a unified plural paradigm took place back in the 14th-16th centuries). Until 1918, the endings of the plural of feminine and neuter adjectives and adjective pronouns in im.p. and wine.p. ( - iya, -ya) were orthographically different from the masculine plural ( - iе, -е): new(books, fields) – new (chairs); in addition, there was a plural pronoun. w.r. Heѣ and the word form of the pronoun and plural numeral. w.r. oneѣ with a stressed ending (at least in poetry - in accordance with pronunciation); to a small extent, these word forms are preserved in modern reprints of old texts and stylizations. See Pronoun for more details.

In pre-reform spelling, in addition, the gender of pluralia tantum was different: new watch - new scissors(cm. ) .

2.6.1.2. Numerals both and two

In modern Russian, there are different forms of im.p. in the plural. (vin.p. inanimate) numerals both/both, two/two And one and a half/one and a half(cf. word forms fixed for both genders dv e eleven And dv e sti, But dv A twenty). Indirect forms of the numeral also differ both (about O their, about O them, about O them – about e their, about e them, about e them), for which the rule is “artificial”, invented by N.I. Grech [Graudina et al. 1976:256]. In [Zaliznyak 1967] forms of indirect cases of feminine pronouns both called "obsolete"; A similar point of view was expressed by V.V. Vinogradov.

However, in modern texts the mixing of these word forms is observed in both directions:

(96) There magnetic radiation supports an object with both sides, so you don’t have to tiptoe around the apartment, fearing that the top will fall down. ["Hooligan" (2004)]

(97) Then somehow he grinned very charmingly and winked both eyes["Theater Life" (2004)]

At the same time, feminine forms, in general, are preserved in the language; yes, combinations both hands, both hands, in both hands, both hands have been found since 1967 (after the publication of the “Russian Nominal Inflection”) 758 times, and non-normative both hands etc. – only 5. In the Corpus of oral texts, the ratio for these contexts is 17:1 in favor of the normative form of the numeral; Wed the only deviation:

(98) [No. 0] Do you personally approve or not of Kasyanov’s resignation? [No. 8, husband, 61] With both hands for / that it was removed on time. [Conversation with a sociologist on socio-political topics (2004)]

According to search engine Google, ratio both hands / both hands lower than in the Corpus, which includes mostly edited written texts - 20:1.

The predominance of normative forms is somewhat less in combinations with objects that have natural pairing, but also in combinations with other lexemes, for example, the word side: in the main corpus the predominance of the normative form of the numeral both– 58:1, in newspaper – 181:1, and in oral even 4.5:1. According to Google, the ratio is slightly lower than with the lexeme hand– 16:1.

(99) Because I believe / that any action should be non-violent / and there should always be a step towards / with both sides. [Conversation with E. Shklyarsky (rock band “Picnic”) on the radio station “Our Radio” (2003)]

In Soviet newspapers of the 1970s, according to [Graudina et al. 1976:256], non-normative forms wallpaper-/both- for all lexemes reached 5%.

2.6.1.3. Selective designs

In selective designs (one of which, each of which) the choice of gender of the pronoun is dictated by the gender of the coreferent noun, represented in the sentence only by the plural form:

(100) Several classes tasks for each of which comparative testing of solution methods implemented in the program is carried out. ["Information Technology" (2004)]

(101) There are 19 systems certification, inside each of which― its own accreditation system... [“Aerospace Defense” (2003)]

(102) Draw diagrams of possible connections of three resistors, each of which has a resistance R. [B. Lukashik, E. Ivanova. Collection of problems in physics. 7-9 grades (2003)]

2.6.1.4. Number expression and morphological gender

Plural word forms have a set of endings dictated, although not unambiguously, by the type of inflection (the so-called “morphological gender”, see above). In particular, in the plural for nouns of different morphological genders, sets of endings of the nominative and genitive case are contrasted [Zaliznyak 1967]:

• male morphological gender : -i – -ov/s – 97.3% of cases;
• female morphological gender: - and – -0 – 98.9% of cases;
• average morphological genus: - a – 0 – 96.4% of cases.

3. Syntax

When agreeing, a noun (and a pronoun-noun) dictates the choice of the concordant class of the dependent adjective (adjective, participle, pronoun-adjective, numeral): new (your, second) doll,new (your, second) knife,new (your, second) ice cream. When agreeing by gender, adjectives have the same set of grammes as the noun (including the so-called paired gender(see clause 2.2): one sleigh, each of the sleighs).

Phenomena that are usually not classified as such are close to agreement by genus. This:

• coordination of the predicate with the subject in the past tense and subjunctive mood (historically the form of the past tense in -l– agreed participle):

(103) If so is mine my heart responded, so mine mind brightened, my will aroused, my whole being tensed with the desire to live like this, to respond to these words with my whole life - I not only recognized myself, I learned something new about God. [Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom). About Christian life (1990)]

• coordination anaphoric pronouns(see Pronouns) with their coreferent noun by gender:

(104) I climb into fridge. He EMPTY I look at the tables - there is nothing... [Woman + man: Marriage (forum) (2004)]

(105) The peasants and the governors, in solidarity with them, urgently asked the Deputy Prime Minister to “reach president", to That reined in the "oil barons". [AND. Pylaev. War disrupts the sowing season (2003)]

Like compatible parts of speech ( new doctor), coordination of pronouns is carried out according to meaning, based on the gender of the referent:

(106) Talking about your political career, deputy stated that if to her offered to join the government, she would like to receive the portfolio of Minister of Defense, because she loves the military very much: “They are as direct and honest as I am.” [ABOUT. Boytsova. "Playboy" almost stripped a deputy (2002)]

4. Semantics

In general, the question of the semantic motivation of the Russian gender (as in other languages ​​of the world) remains open (cf. [Plungyan 2000:154], [Kopeliovich 2008:106]), however, for a number of groups of nouns, corresponding trends can be determined.

4.1. Gender and gender

The grammatical gender of animate names correlates to a certain extent with the ungrammatical (nominative) meaning of biological sex. For the most part, nouns denoting persons have a gender corresponding to their gender. A number of such designations, mainly terms of kinship, are tied to a specific gender and, accordingly, gender (the meaning of gender is part of the semantics of the root: man Woman,father, mother, uncle, aunt; Wed unpaired typist, ballerina, ambassador, driver). Other nouns form the so-called sexual paradigm [Krongauz 1996] or gender pairs [Voeykova 2008], that is, word-formation pairs of designations for persons of different sexes: salesman - saleswoman, Frenchman - Frenchwoman, nephew - niece; pairs type Uncle Aunt can be considered as suppletive forms of the sexual paradigm.

E. Spencer () sees in the Russian gender the features of an inflectional category; So, regular education:

• men's and female forms personal pronoun ( he she it, pl. h. They(there is also an inflectional interpretation of these forms, cf. Pronoun);
• substantivized adjectives ( duty officer - duty officer, student - student);
• surnames on -ov/-ev, -oh/-y (Ivanov - Ivanova, Dostoevsky - Dostoevskaya, pl. h. Ivanovs, Dostoevskys).

This is partly true for names like Alexander - Alexandra, Evgeniy - Evgeniya. Wed. advertising poster where Valentines used similarly Ivanovs, for a generic pair of names: Discounts for all Valentines on February 14th.

There are words that mean certain roles, functions, occupations for which the masculine gender is normal, “by default” covering both sexes:

(107) For example, Russian man, thinking about national pride, says: “Russian spirit, Eurasia,” and the listener perceives this thought as “enslavement of the countries of Eastern Europe.” [L. Perlovsky. Consciousness, language and mathematics (2003)]

(108) Do not despise, my dear reader, raven is an excellent meat for broth. [Recipes national cuisines: France (2000-2005)]

(109) Now teachers order gifts for themselves... who gold chain, who is a food processor... [Our Children: Teenagers (2004)] (we are clearly talking mainly about women)

Adjacent to the same class are general designations of persons not marked by gender: Human, subject, individual(um) masculine, face- neuter, a person, personality, individual, also a function designation (not necessarily personal!) victim– female. From the designations of a number of professions and ranks of type director, professor, doctor feminine form ( headmistress, professor, doctor) is either colloquial and reduced in nature, or (in cases general's wife, professor's wife) is interpreted (also) as " X's spouse". About the transition of words like doctor in unstable general genus see .

(110) - Do you like the poetry of the Acmeists? - asked Moskvich, tall, thin or professor, or gangster, or a gypsy. [IN. Aksenov. Round the clock non-stop (1976)]

Words denoting animals correlate weaker with biological sex, despite the presence of word-forming nests with a sexual paradigm ( cat - cat, wolf - she-wolf) or roots whose meaning includes the component “male” or “female” ( rooster – chicken, ram – sheep, male – bitch). Yes, the names biological species have a specific, non-sex-motivated gender, and these names are applied to an animal when its sex is unknown or unimportant. So, there is a neutral cat, But cat– usually about an animal of known sex; neutral dog vs. additionally marked stylistically dog and special gender designations male And bitch. It has been noticed that for wild animals the unmarked gender is often masculine (bear, wolf, tiger), for households – female ( pig, sheep, chicken) [Voeykova 2008]. For most animals, the designation of sex is not determined word-formatively, but only with the help of words male And female(owl, frog, grasshopper, woodpecker and so on.). Wed. problems in translating animal tales: Kipling's Bagheera panther, Milne's Owl, Carroll's Caterpillar caterpillar - all masculine (he); during translation, either the gender or the name of the character changes (Owl, Worm, etc.)

In questionnaires, forms, etc., it is common to indicate word forms in two genders (often abbreviated) depending on the gender of the respondent ( was born; spouse)); it is understood that in each specific case one of the options can be left and the second crossed out:

(111) How He/she perceived counselors, therapists, teachers, as well as managers and government officials? [AND. P. Pronin. Psychologist's work with members of new religious movements (2004)]

Under the influence of the phenomenon of “political correctness” in Western European languages ​​(cf. English s/he ‘she or he’, German man/frau ‘indefinite pronoun’ instead of man from the grammaticalized Mann ‘man’), designations like he she, he or she as an anaphoric reference to notations like reader speaking,listening:

(112) It (the book by A. A. Zaliznyak) is written captivatingly and is accessible to the non-professional reader - if he she will take the trouble to understand unfamiliar to him to her subjects. [IN. M. Zhivov. What a Forger Can't (2004)]

4.2. Semantic coordination

A series of words (doctor, director, secretary - about two hundred in total, see [Graudina et al. 1976:96–101] ) , normatively belonging only to the masculine gender, throughout the 20th century tended to act in general kind(see paragraph 2.3), or, which is the same thing, be consistent in meaning in the case when they mean women.

According to [Zaliznyak 1967], the tendency to agree these words according to the feminine gender does not apply to indirect cases (* this doctor), in this case they should be separated into a separate concordant class (different from the general genus with the full paradigm), or a separate lexeme should be considered doctor feminine without indirect cases.

According to the Internet, the combination this doctor quite often noted in modern electronic communications. The clarification in the following example is typical:

(113) This (rather this) doctor I found out about 2.5 years ago. I go to her as if on a holiday. (www.cooking.ru)

Let's also note a very early example:

(114) I invited this doctor Radzyankov. (Letter to Olga Berggolts from her mother Maria Timofeevna, September 1935)

4.3. Gender of inanimate nouns and neuter “default” gender

Grammatical gender of inanimate names in general view does not correlate with any semantic component, cf. sofa - chair - stool, knife - sieve - fork, cheese - butter - sour cream. However, in a number of cases such a correlation can be traced, for example:

• Among the names of organizations, groups, and individual objects, the masculine gender predominates [Grammatika 1980(1):467];
• masculine all month designations ( January December);
• most disease names (illness, cold, pain, illness, fever, rubella, mumps, urticaria) and many words with a negative evaluation ( daub, bad taste, nonsense) female. It was noted (V.V. Vinogradov) that words of the feminine gender are more expressive than those of the masculine gender.
• among abstract vocabulary (due to productive classes of verbal derivatives in -nie, -stvo) the neuter gender predominates.

The neuter gender is used by default when there is a zero coordination controller or an indefinite subject (“null elements”, according to I. A. Melchuk), for more details see Impersonality:

(115) Once upon a time pulled propagandist to tell about the military path of his heroic “formation”, as if by the way, to report how at the Popelnya station he was once almost killed: bomb fragment knocked out glass in the sorting building and that fragment hit the wall, right above the boss’s head. [IN. Astafiev. Overtone (1995-1996)]

Wed. also the use of predicates, going back to the use of the default adjective in the neuter gender as a predicate with an infinitive subject:

(116) Cold, by the way, almost fell off him, driving three and a half meters in front of the editorial office, and said that he would ride creepy. [TO. Doroshin. My stool with a motor (2004)]

The use of adjectives in the instrumental case is similar. units (homonymous m. r. singular) with verbs like seem[Kopeliovich 2008:31]:

(117) It seems to us obvious that the shadow economy will concentrate in economically profitable activities, leaving “unprofitable” industries unattended. ["Statistical Issues" (2004)]

5 Conclusions

The category of genus is characterized by the duality inherent in categories of type concordant class(see point 1): it is both word-classifying(see Grammatical category) (in nouns and noun pronouns) and conciliatory(see Grammatical category) (for other parts of speech - adjective, pronoun-adjective, numeral, verb), and it is in the coordination of adjectival parts of speech and the past tense verb that the classification of nouns by gender is diagnosed.

In the Russian language, gender largely correlates with the inflectional type of the noun (morphological gender).

The gender of nouns has certain zones of variability (indeclinable nouns, words with a soft consonant) - namely, precisely those where the choice of morphological gender is difficult. In the choice of gender of nouns there are two opposing tendencies - formal ( coat, cocoa s.r., BAM, housing office m.r., nerd zh.r.) and semantic ( doctor zh.r., unfortunate artist m.r.).

6. Statistics

Statistical data are presented for the Subcorpus with homonymy removed.

Table 1. Gender as a word-classifying category of nouns

Table 2. Gender as a word-classifying category of pronouns-nouns

Table 3. Gender (and number) as a concordant category of adjectives (+ past tense of the verb)

Masculine
Feminine	311260 // Computational linguistics and intelligent technologies: Based on materials from the annual International conference“Dialogue” (Bekasovo, May 25-29, 2011), 10(17). M.: Publishing house of the Russian State University for the Humanities. 2011. pp. 562–579. Corbett. G.G. Gender Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991. Spencer A. Gender as an inflectional category // Journal of Linguistics, 38(2). 2002.

The main grammatical feature that is inherent in almost every part of speech is the category of gender. How many genders do nouns have and how to correctly determine this category for this part of speech? You will find answers to these and other questions in the article.

What is the gender of nouns?

Category of gender of nouns in Russian– a grammatical sign indicating the gender (gender) of the object (living creature, phenomenon) called by the noun or its absence. Gender is a permanent grammatical feature of nouns and is studied in the 6th grade.

Features of the category of gender of nouns

There are three types of nouns in the Russian language:

• Male (he). Masculine nouns in the singular I. p. have the endings -a, -я, and zero.

  Examples of masculine nouns: dad, uncle, knife, table, hawk.

• Female (she). Feminine nouns in the singular I. p. have the endings -a, -я, and zero.

  Examples of feminine nouns: wife, nanny, night, glory, desert.

• Average (it). Neuter nouns in the singular I. p. have endings -о, -е.

  Examples of neuter nouns: swamp, gold, sun, lake, jam.

There is also a class of words, the so-called general gender, which, depending on the context, can be used in both masculine and feminine genders

(boring, sissy, crybaby, smart, greedy).

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How to determine the gender of a noun?

For animate nouns, the gender coincides with the gender of a living creature, a person (father, interlocutor - m.r., girlfriend, gossip - f.r.).

For all nouns, gender can be determined by the grammatical form of the adjective, which agrees with the noun:

• Masculine whose? Which? ( White snow, good advice);
• Feminine. Nouns agree with adjectives that answer questions - whose? which? ( latest newspaper, funny friend);
• Neuter gender. Nouns agree with adjectives that answer questions - whose? which? (green field, tall building).

All Russian speakers are accustomed to words divided into three categories of grammatical gender: masculine, feminine and neuter. But at the same time, there are languages ​​in the world in which the category of gender is completely absent. And languages ​​in which the number of genders is in the dozens.

In fact, most languages ​​have no concept of gender at all. A typical example of this is. Although, there is another opinion - that the gender is present in any case, it’s just that the endings of the words do not change. Pronouns (he/she/it) and words like lion/lioness are also cited as evidence of gender in English. However, in in this case It's more about vocabulary.

There are no genders in many other languages. For example, . Moreover, in the vast majority (about 3/4) of modern languages, the concept of grammatical gender is absent.

This does not bother native speakers in any way. Moreover, in some cases, the absence of gender may even make life easier. For example, there is no need to solve riddles like: “coffee” and “whisky” are “he” or “it”. And schoolchildren do not have to memorize what gender a particular word belongs to.

On the other hand, in some cases gender can be used as a tool for disambiguation. For example, in Russian there are the words “friend” and “girlfriend”, while in English only “friend” - the gender here can be determined solely from the context.

The presence of gender in the target language can significantly complicate learning for a native speaker of a language that does not have such a concept. Also, many problems arise in cases where the births do not coincide. For example, the word “chair” in Russian is masculine, while in French (chaise) it is feminine. There are many such examples.

In different languages, the gender of a noun can influence other words in a sentence. For example, in Russian the verb changes: “the cat ran”, but “the cat ran”. At the same time, depending on the gender, the article changes, but not the verb. At the same time, there are languages ​​in which changes can be literally total. For example, not only verbs can agree by gender (and even in all tenses), but also adverbs with prepositions.

Some languages ​​have two genders. For example, in Swedish, masculine and feminine genders were so similar that over time they merged into one common gender. As a result, the language has only neuter and common gender. The situation is similar in language. IN Arabic also there are only two genders - masculine and feminine.

Languages ​​with genders can be divided into 4 main types:

• Masculine and feminine ( , Albanian...);
• Masculine, feminine and neuter gender (,...);
• General and neuter gender (,...);
• Animate and inanimate (Basque, some extinct languages).

In some languages ​​it is very easy to determine what gender a word is. For example, in (with rare exceptions) all masculine words end in -o, and feminine words end in -a. In Russian there are no clear boundaries. In addition, often words that mean the same thing can have different genders. A typical example: the word “potato” is masculine, and “potato” is feminine.

There are also languages ​​in which the number of genders is so large that they use the concept of “class”. Moreover, the number of such classes can exceed several dozen. For example, there may be classes of plants, animals, objects, etc. There are especially many languages ​​with such features in Africa. Moreover, in them the class of the noun often influences not only the verb, but in general almost all the words in the sentence.

However, all the languages ​​of the world have one thing in common - a noun cannot arbitrarily change its gender (class). Unless it changes over time. This usually happens with words of foreign origin that have already had time to “get comfortable.”

The reasons for the emergence of division into clans are not known, because all this happened in very ancient times. It is only clear that at the heart of everything lay the way of life of primitive people and their needs. But which ones exactly, one can only guess. Scientists make various assumptions that look more or less convincing.

And one cannot fail to note another important aspect - grammatical gender, its presence or absence, has a huge impact on the culture of the people who are native speakers of the language.

1. The main social organization of the primitive communal system, united by blood kinship. The elder of the clan.

2. A number of generations descending from one ancestor, as well as a generation in general. Ancient river Lead your r. from someone(come from someone). Originally a peasant. From the clan in the river(from generation to generation). Without clan without tribe(about a person of unknown origin; obsolete and colloquial). Neither clan nor tribe(about a lonely person who has no relatives; obsolete and colloquial). It's in our family(transmitted hereditarily).

| adj. generic, oh, oh. Tribal community. R. build(primitive communal). R. life. Family privileges. Generic and species concepts.

1. A type of something that has something. quality, property. R. troops(military formations that have weapons and military equipment unique to them).

2. Something (someone) like someone, something like someone. This hotel r. boarding house.

Of a kind 1) from a certain point of view. He is talented in his own way; 2) original. Two brothers, each in his own way.

All (different) kinds all sorts of different ones. All kinds of visitors.

Kind peculiar, as it were. A kind of original.

III. GENUS, -a, pl. -s, -ov, husband. In grammar: 1) grammatical category, a class of names (with 6 meanings), characterized by certain case endings, peculiarities of agreement and capable (in terms of words naming animate objects) to indicate male or female gender. Nouns are masculine, feminine and neuter; 2) a category of verbs in the singular forms of the past tense and the subjunctive mood, expressing the attribution of an action to a name (in 6 meanings) of one of three genders, or to a male or female person. Verb in the past tense form of the masculine (feminine, neuter) gender.

Dictionary Ozhegova. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949-1992 .

Synonyms:

See what “gender” is in other dictionaries:

A(y); m. 1. sentence: about the generation, in the generation and in the generation, according to the generation; pl.: childbirth, ov. The main community of people in primitive society, representing a union of large families in related relationships. The elder of the clan. 2. sentence: about the genus, in the genus and in the genus, on ... encyclopedic Dictionary

genus- genus, a term used to designate various unilinear kinship associations (see Unilinearity), the members of which trace their origins to a single ancestor and which are typical of pre-industrial societies. Characteristic for Russian and... Encyclopedia "Peoples and Religions of the World"

GENUS, kind, sentence. about the race and to the race, in the race, plural. childbirth, childbirth, husband (see also childbirth). 1. The main public organization in primitive society, which is a union of large families that are related and leading general farming… … Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary

Noun, m., used. very often Morphology: (no) what? kind of, what? family, (see) what? genus, what? home, about what? about the clan and in the clan; pl. What? childbirth, (no) what? childbirth, why? giving birth, (see) what? childbirth, what? childbirth, about what? about genera variety, similarity 1.… … Dmitriev's Explanatory Dictionary

GENUS- single focal dose of honey. ROD Russian national movement former Movement“For the revival of the Cossacks” of the Russian Federation ROD aircraft engine stop lever ...

Genus- Gender is a grammatical category characteristic of different parts speech and consists in the distribution of words or forms into two or three classes, traditionally correlated with gender characteristics or lack thereof; These classes are usually called male, female, middle... Linguistic encyclopedic dictionary

Edward (edouard Rod, 1857 1910) Swiss novelist who wrote in French. language He studied in Bern, then in Berlin. From 1887 to 1893 he was a professor of general literature in Geneva, then moved to Paris. His first novels were written in the spirit of naturalism... ... Literary encyclopedia

Genus- Genus ♦ Genre A broad collection that can only be defined in relation to other collections. A genus is wider than a species (a genus includes many species), but narrower than an order (in the biological sense of the word, the genus Homo, the only living representative... ... Philosophical Dictionary Sponville

Genus.- Genus. Rodion name Rod. “Rodina” magazine publication Dictionary: S. Fadeev. Dictionary of abbreviations of the modern Russian language. St. Petersburg: Politekhnika, 1997. 527 p. R. genus. was born … Dictionary of abbreviations and abbreviations

Family, surname, origin. To trace one's family from whom, to trace one's family back to a distant ancestor. Wed. . See quality, tribe, origin, rank, family, method, style of being from. kind, in what form kind, one of a kind,... ... Synonym dictionary

Books

• Family of nobles Demidov, K.D. Golovshchikov. Family of noble Demidovs / compiled by K. Golovshchikov: In the printing house of the Provincial Board, 1881: compiled by K. Golovshchikov Reproduced in the original author’s spelling of the 1881 edition...

General nouns in Russian form a special group. Its definition is based on the grammatical uniqueness of words, which is based on a change in gender depending on the gender of the specified person.

Gender of nouns

In total, there are 4 genders for nouns in the Russian language: common gender, neuter, masculine and feminine. The last three are easy to determine by the ending or semantic context. But what to do if the word can mean both male and female? This problem occurs with the words “bully”, “cunning”, “rogue”, “wretch”, “touchy”, “sleepy”, “mediocre”, “inhuman”, “hurry”, “piggy”, “bully”, etc. which may change.

It is traditionally believed that there are only three genders in the Russian language, they include masculine, feminine and neuter. To determine the gender of some common words, it has been customary to look to the context. The names of professions, for example, are divided into parallel names: saleswoman-saleswoman, teacher-teacher, schoolboy-schoolgirl, pilot-pilot, cook-cook, writer-writer, athlete-athlete, leader-leader. At the same time, in official documents the masculine gender of these words is more often used to refer to women. And there are also examples of general nouns designated exclusively by the masculine gender: gynecologist, lawyer, linguist, philologist, correspondent, ambassador, academician, judge, toastmaster, surgeon, doctor, therapist, paramedic, master, courier, curator, appraiser, insurer, diplomat, politician, employee, specialist, worker. Now there is a tendency to classify such words as general gender, since they can be applied to both men and women.

Ambiguity of opinions

Disputes about recognizing the existence of a common genus have been going on since the 17th century. Then similar words were mentioned in the grammars of Zizaniy and Smotrytsky. Lomonosov singled out such nouns, pointing out their formal characteristics. Later, researchers began to doubt their existence, defining such nouns as words with alternating gender, depending on what was implied.

So to this day, opinions are divided; some scientists consider common nouns in the Russian language to be separate homonym words of different genders, while others recognize them in a separate group.

Surnames

Some indeclinable surnames of foreign origin and Russian surnames with -о and -ы/х can be classified as words of general gender. Sagan, Depardieu, Reno, Rabelais, Dumas, Verdi, Maurois, Hugo, Defieux, Michon, Tussaud, Picasso and others. These are all examples of common gender nouns among foreign surnames. Among the Slavic surnames of the common family, the following are often found: Tkachenko, Yurchenko, Nesterenko, Prokhorenko, Chernykh, Makarenko, Ravenskikh, Kucherenko, Dolgikh, Savchenko, Sedykh, Kutsykh and others.

Nationalities

The names of some nationalities are defined as words of a general gender. These include: Khanty, Mansi, Quechua, Komi, Gujarati, Hezhe, Mari, Sami. The fact is that “Mari” and “Mari” already exist, but the word “Mari” will be common to the entire nation or nationality.

According to the same principle, the names of breeds (Sivka, Okapi, Bulanka), as well as representatives of groups (vis-a-vis), are also included in the general genus.

Informal proper names

In addition to surnames, there is an interesting separate category of proper names that relate to the topic of the article. These are abbreviations for official names, which often cause confusion during gender determination.

The name "Sasha" can belong to both Alexandra and Alexander, and the name "Valya" is used to call both the girl Valentina and the boy Valentin. Other such names include “Zhenya” from Evgeniy and Evgeniya, “Slava” from Yaroslav and Yaroslava, Vladislav and Vladislava, “Vasya” from Vasily and Vasilisa.

Evaluative, characterizing words

However, for the first time about the existence common nouns The question arose because of evaluative words affecting the character or traits of a person. In direct speech, when using them, it can be more difficult to track the gender of the recipient of the remark, for example: “You are a bully!” Here the word "bully" can be addressed to both the female and male genders. These also include words of the general kind “bully”, “rogue”, “clever”, “well done”, “tramp”, “egoza”, “cripple”, “stinker”, “big”, “little fellow”, “ disheveled."

In fact, there are a lot of similar evaluative words. They can have both positive and negative meaning. However, such words should not be confused with an assessment as a result of metaphorical transfer, due to which they retain the original gender: crow, fox, rag, ulcer, beluga, goat, cow, deer, woodpecker, seal.

Words of a general kind with negative and positive meanings include: fool, prude, reptile, thug, baby, child, baby, quiet, invisible, poor thing, lazybones, dirty, big, sweet tooth, clean, greedy, miser, chatter, beast, star , idle talker, mumbler, arrogant, scoundrel, klutz, weasel, asked, hard worker, hard worker, ignorant, onlooker, drunkard, honey, cudgel, imagined, hillbilly, slob, sleepyhead, sneak, whim, liar, hoarder, fidget, toastmaster, swashbuckler , rake.

An example of use is clearly shown in fiction: “A little son came to his father” (Mayakovsky), “There lived an artist Tube, a musician Guslya and other kids: Toropyzhka, Grumpy, Silent, Donut, Rasteryayka, two brothers - Avoska and Neboska. And the most famous among them was a kid named Dunno " (Nosov). Perhaps, it is the works of Nikolai Nosov that will become a real collection of words with a common gender.

The fewest words in this group are occupied by neutrally expressed ones, such as: right-handed, left-handed, colleague, namesake, orphan. The gender of such words is also common.

How to determine gender in common gender?

The general gender of nouns in the Russian language is determined by the impossibility of confidently indicating gender in the absence of pronouns and generic endings adjectives. Words that can be classified as either masculine or feminine will be included in this group.

In order to determine the gender of a noun, accompanying words are most often used demonstrative pronouns“this, this, that, that”, endings of adjectives -aya, -y/iy. But if the name of a profession, position or rank is determined with a consonant ending “sergeant, doctor, doctor, director” and others, then the adjective can only be masculine, but the predicate is expressed feminine. “The doctor prescribed the drug” and “An attractive doctor came out of hospital", "The sergeant gave the order" and "The strict sergeant allowed me to rest", "This Marina Nikolaevna is an exemplary teacher!" and "An exemplary teacher conducted public lesson", "The cheerful puppeteer gave a performance" and "The old master sat down on the porch." The predicate does not have to show gender, then the task of determining gender becomes more complicated: "The teacher conducts a lesson", "The specialist makes a decision."

Variety of examples

Thanks to the examples, it becomes clear that a wide variety of words can be found among common nouns, such as “daredevil”, “bully”, “bred”, “forester”, “old-timer”, “tail”, “six”, “ignorant”, “boring”, “white-handed”, “slut”, “weeper”, “dirty”, “little one”. And other words. But they are all united by ambiguity in the definition of gender. Orphan, stylist, marketer, comrade, coordinator, curator, Russian specialist, linguist, shirt, foreman, kid, judge, kolobrodina, feisty, razin, protégé, roar, singer, muffin, bombard, dunce, stupid, suck-up, upstart, youngster, fearful, poor thing, lame, charming, first-grader, high school student, eleven-year-old - all these nouns can be used in relation to both genders.

The wide cultural distribution of common nouns in the Russian language is also interesting. For example, they were widely used in proverbs and sayings:

1. A healthy man in food, but a cripple in work.
2. For every simpleton there is a deceiver.
3. A reveler in his youth is modest in his old age.
4. A drunkard is like a chicken, where he steps, he will peck.

And in literature:

1. “So a strange deal took place, after which the tramp and the millionaire parted, quite satisfied with each other” (Green).
2. “Good girl, one orphan” (Bazhenov).
3. “Your cleanliness, as doctors say, is sterile” (Dubov).
4. “Hillbilly! - What? - She recoiled” (Shargunov).

There are many such examples in the literature. Determining the general gender of the words listed in the exercise is one of the tasks in the Russian language lesson that is easy to cope with.