The noun gender category is one of the most difficult and interesting problems in the Russian language. Of course, a native Russian speaker will not be mistaken in determining the gender of the words house, wall, window. It is more difficult to determine the gender of such nouns, for example, as art show and competition show, VAT and Foreign Ministry. The peculiarity of the genus is that, covering almost all nouns, it is defined on different grounds for different groups of nouns. Difficult cases of determining the gender of nouns are considered in this article.
In relation to the category of gender, all nouns in the Russian language are divided primarily into two groups: the first, large, includes nouns that have gender, and the second, smaller, includes nouns that do not have gender. The second group consists of nouns that are used only in the plural: finance, trousers, couloirs. They should not be confused with nouns that are usually used in the plural, but have a singular form that allows you to determine their grammatical gender, for example: boots-boots (M. R.), hair-hair (M. R.), descendants-descendant (M. R.), ambition-ambition (J. R.).
Nouns that have gender are divided into three categories: masculine, feminine, and neuter. A peculiar group of nouns of the general gender. These nouns are called a person and, depending on the use, they reveal the properties of the masculine or feminine gender: Senyasuch a clever girl (masculine). Sonyaso smart (feminine). This includes emotional-evaluative words (tikhonya, pustomelya, sissy, sweet tooth), foreign-language vowel surnames (Exupery, Maigret), non-declinable consonant and vowel surnames (Malykh, Pisarenko, Stepanenko), incomplete declinable names of people on-a (-z): (Sasha, Zhenya), some non-declinable names of people on-a (- z): (Sasha, Zhenya). names of persons by nationality (Sami, Mansi, Komi).
Gender is established on different bases for animate and inanimate nouns. The gender of animate nouns, including t ...
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