Gender category of nouns: On a material of comparison of Russian and Polish languages

Abstract

Morphological gender category of Russian substantives had drawn attention of scientists in connection to studying of a whole range of its aspects: formation history, proportion of gender and sex, creative functions, realized in different speech types, etc. Certain issues on regarding analysis of grammatic gender of nouns in Polish language had also received highlighting in scientific literature, However, the deep, universal study of this problem in comparative aspect is still not conducted. Particularly, issues related to description of structural organization of grammatic gender, plan of its content are still underserved, which stipulates actuality of our addressing to this problem. At comparison of considered grammatical objects were used the following methods: comparativehistoric, comparative, description-analytical, distributive, method of component analysis. In result of conducted research is made a row of generalizations. It is established that gender of nouns in both languages is a ternary, non-inflectional, semantical with structural significance, reflective category. From point of view of meaning, similarity is detected in presence of semantic signs of alive / un-alive subject, sex (male or female) and person. Difference consist in the fact that seme of person of a male sex received the most clear expression both in paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects only in Polish language. In class of Russian substantives of male gender the indicated seme has no similar methods of representation. Received results at comparison of them with characteristics of other morphological categories of Russian and Polish language would allow to complement the general picture of scientific notations about their grammatical system.