论英语名词的性

On the Gender of English Nouns

本文简要探讨英语名词的“性”并与之相关问题。本文中区分两种不同概念的“性”：英语之语义概念“性”与法德俄之语法概念“性”。英语名词中四种不同类别的“性”：阳性、阴性、通性和中性。除了少数一些自身显示性属特征的通性名词以外，多数通性名词有三种性属标记方法：词缀附加法、词汇复合法和短语构成法。英语名词的性属类别涉及到其相应代词的性属选择问题。大多数情况下，代词应和其指代的名词保持性属特征一致，但也有例外情况。英语在其发展过程中失去了大多数词尾的屈折变化，包括名词语法上的性概念范畴。

This research paper mainly discusses gender of English nouns and its corresponding issues. Gender in other Indo-European languages is a grammatical abstract notion, but English gender is a semantic concrete conception. English nouns can be divided into four categories： masculine, feminine, common and neuter. Gender genre of an English noun involves the choice of a pronoun that is employed to substitute it. Gender of the pronoun should be identical with its referent. However, the rule may be broken under special conditions. English has lost most word-ending inflectional changes, including grammatical gender of nouns.