What are general nouns. Gender categories of nouns in modern Russian

Instructions

When determining the feminine gender of inanimate nouns, keep in mind that they have endings in the singular form -а, -я (wall, will) and zero if the noun ends in soft sign(rye). For animate nouns the defining feature is their belonging to the female creatures (girl, cat). In order not to confuse masculine and feminine nouns at the end, substitute the pronoun "she, mine" for verification. For example, a song (she, mine).

Determine the masculine gender of nouns at the end of the form: zero for words ending in a consonant (house, table), -а, -я - for animate nouns, male creatures (uncle, Seryozha). In order not to confuse the gender of nouns ending in a soft sign, also substitute the pronoun "he, mine" (stump, day) for testing.

Determine neuter nouns by the endings of the initial form -о, -е and by substituting pronouns "it, mine" (field, window). Note that the group of different declined nouns ending with -my also refers to the neuter gender (tribe, seed, etc.). Among the neuter nouns there are almost no animate ones, their number is quite insignificant (child, creature, animal).

Among nouns, several special groups stand out, the gender in which is difficult. These include general nouns, non-declining and compound words.
Correlate the meanings of general nouns with their belonging to objects of the female or male sex. For example, a girl - (feminine), an arrogant boy (masculine). General nouns include those that denote the qualities of people (glutton, ignoramus, crybaby) or the name of persons by profession, position, occupation (Ivanov - architect Ivanova).

Keep in mind that the gender of non-declining nouns is associated with their animate / inanimate, specific / generic concept. In animate non-declining nouns, determine gender by gender (monsieur, miss). Nouns that give names to animals and birds are masculine (ponies, kangaroos, cockatoo). The inanimate usually belong to the middle class (, muffler). The exceptions are words whose genus is determined by association with generic names: kohlrabi - cabbage (feminine), Hindi - language (masculine), etc.

To determine the gender of non-declining proper nouns denoting geographical names, choose the generic term (, city, river, etc.). For example, the city of Rio de Janeiro (masculine), the Gobi Desert (feminine).

Determine the genus of abbreviated words (abbreviations) by the genus of the leading word of the "decoded" phrase: UN - United Nations, the leading word "organization" (feminine).

note

Some nouns have variant gender forms. At the same time, some of them are equal (aviary - aviary, banknotes - banknote), and the rest have stylistic marks: hall - hall (outdated form), giraffe - giraffe (outdated form).

Helpful advice

For nouns that are used only in the plural form, the gender category is not defined (whitewash, vise, everyday life).

Sources:

genera of the Russian language

To determine the gender of nouns, you must first determine the word that answers the question who, what. This is a noun. In Russian, it can be masculine, feminine and neuter.

Instructions

Determine the gender of the noun by the ending or final consonant. The masculine gender includes words that end with a consonant and -y. For example, a house, a loaf. The feminine gender includes nouns ending in -а, -я, -и. For example, cousin,. Nouns ending in -o, -e, -ie belong to the neuter gender. For example, a window, a dress.

See if this noun is an exception. These include nouns ending in –ь. Such nouns can be both feminine and masculine. So, the dictionary refers to the masculine gender, and the word notebook refers to the feminine gender.

Pay attention to the gender of animate nouns. They are nouns that mean living things. Such words refer to either the feminine or masculine gender. Exceptions are the child who are of the middle family. In animate nouns, define gender either by natural sex or animal, or by the ending of the noun. Elephant is a masculine noun and a monkey is a feminine noun.

Determine the gender of vocational nouns correctly. They are masculine and feminine. Moreover, most of the nouns denoting professions belong to the masculine gender: doctor, engineer,.

Special attention give the gender of the borrowed nouns. Nouns of a foreign language often have atypical for the Russian language -и, -у, -ю. Such nouns do not change either in numbers or in cases. The masculine gender includes the names and names of cities and islands. Feminine gender includes female names and surnames, river names and newspaper names. The names of inanimate objects belong to the middle genus.

note

The nouns ending in a consonant and –th are always masculine.

Most nouns are feminine foreign origin end in -ya.
Nouns ending in the suffixes -onok, -enok are always masculine.

Sources:

"The grammar of the Russian language in illustrations", Pekhlivanova K.I., Lebedeva M.N., 1985.
how to determine gender in Russian

Definition kind in Russian language Is one of the most common tasks for people learning this language. In Russian language there are three kind- male, female and medium. In addition, there is a common genus, the definition of which is the most difficult.

You will need

The ability to highlight the endings different parts speeches

Instructions

Highlight the endings for adjectives and verbs that agree with the word you want to use. More often than not, this is enough to determine. Put the verb in the past tense, and the noun with the adjective in the nominative case. The best friend came, the best friend came, the new one ascended. These are examples of masculine, feminine and neuter endings for adjectives and verbs.

Determine if the word you are looking for denotes a profession or occupation. Most of these words are formally masculine. For example, a new doctor said (oh), a new doctor said (oh); he is an excellent specialist, she is an excellent specialist. Please note that some profession names are not masculine. kind... For example, the word "ballerina" is only feminine kind.

Remember that words like "dumb, fidget, bully, ignorant, greedy, clever" and the like refer to the general family. These words give an emotional connotation to both masculine and feminine words. kind, and name the occupation of these persons.

remember, that kind abbreviations have a special case of difficulty. For abbreviations formed by adding parts of a word, determine the gender by the main word: new savings bank, high-quality organizational work. In the case when a word by adding sounds or letters (vocational school, RAS), clear rules for determining kind no.

Form the gender of non-declining nouns borrowed from other languages according to the following rule. If a noun denotes an object, then it belongs to the middle gender (coat, muffler). If it denotes, it refers to the male gender (chimpanzee). If it calls geographic feature, then refers to the genus of most words of this type in language(Mississippi female kind because it's a river). Remember that there are exceptions in every such case. Refer to reputable dictionaries if any questions you.

Gender of nouns

In total, there are 4 genders for nouns in the Russian gender, neuter, masculine and feminine. The last three are easy to identify by the ending or the semantic context. But what if a word can mean both masculine and feminine at once? Such a problem occurs with the words "bully", "cunning", "rogue", "unfortunate", "touchy", "sleepy", "mediocrity", "inhuman", "hurry", "piggy", "bully", genus which may change.

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

Ambiguity of opinions

Disputes about the recognition of the existence of a common genus have been going on since the 17th century. Then similar words were mentioned in the grammars of Zizania and Smotritsky. 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 nouns of the general gender in Russian as separate words-homonyms of different genders, and the other recognizes them in a separate group.

Surnames

Some non-declining surnames of foreign origin and Russian surnames in -o and -yh / them can be ranked among the words of the general gender. Sagan, Depardieu, Renault, Rabelais, Dumas, Verdi, Morois, Hugo, Defier, Michonne, Tussauds, Picasso and others. All this is among foreign names. Among the common Slavic surnames are often found: Tkachenko, Yurchenko, Nesterenko, Prokhorenko, Chernykh, Makarenko, Ravensky, Kucherenko, Dolgikh, Savchenko, Sedykh, Kutsykh and others.

Nationalities

The names of some nationalities are defined as general words. 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 whole nation or nationality.

According to the same principle, the names of the breeds (sivka, okapi, bulanka), as well as representatives of groups (vis-a-vis), are ranked in the general genus.

Unofficial proper names

In addition to surnames, there is an interesting separate category of proper names related to the topic of the article. These are abbreviations from the official names, which are often confused when determining gender.

The name "Sasha" can belong to both Alexandra and Alexander, and both the girl Valentina and the boy Valentina are called by the name "Valya". These names also include "Zhenya" from Eugene and Eugene, "Glory" from Yaroslav and Yaroslav, Vladislav and Vladislava, "Vasya" from Vasily and Vasilisa.

Evaluative, characterizing words

However, for the first time about the existence common nouns the question was raised 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 replica, for example: "You are a badass!" Here the word "bully" can be addressed as female sex and masculine. They can also include the words of the general genus "bully", "rascal", "clever", "well done", "tramp", "fidget", "cripple", "stinker", "dylda", "little girl", " disheveled. "

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

Common words with negative and positive meanings include: bastard, prude, reptile, brute, baby, child, baby, quiet, invisible, poor fellow, slothful, dirty, brute, sweet tooth, clean, greedy, curmudgeon, tarator, beast, star , idiot, mumbled, sneaky, rogue, idiot, weasel, asked, hard worker, hard worker, ignoramus, onlooker, drunkard, sweetheart, club, imagined, redneck, slob, sleepyhead, sneak, whim, lying, bullshit, fidget, toastmaster, cut-throat , rake.

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

Least of all words in this group are occupied by neutral words, such as: right-handed, left-handed, colleague, namesake, orphan. The gender of such words is also common.

How to determine gender in general gender?

The general gender of nouns in Russian is determined by the impossibility of confidently indicating the gender in the absence of pronouns and generic endings of adjectives. Words that can be attributed to both masculine and feminine, and will be included in this group.

In order to determine the gender of a noun, the accompanying demonstrative pronouns "this, this, that, that" are most often used, the endings of adjectives -a, -y / s. But if the name of the profession, position or title is determined with the ending in a consonant "sergeant, doctor, doctor, director" and others, then the adjective can only be masculine, but the predicate is expressed as feminine. "The doctor prescribed the drug" and "The attractive doctor left hospital "," The sergeant gave the order "and" The strict sergeant allowed to rest "," This exemplary teacher Marina Nikolaevna! " and "The exemplary teacher taught public lesson"," Cheerful puppeteer held a performance "and" Old master sat on the porch. "The predicate does not have to show the gender, then the task of determining the gender becomes more complicated:" The teacher conducts the 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 nouns of a general gender, like "daredevil", "bully", "bred", "forester", "old-timer", "tail", "six", "ignorant", "bore", "white-handed", "brute", "bastard", "scum", "bastard". And other words. But they are all united by the ambiguity in the definition of the genus. Orphan, stylist, marketer, comrade, coordinator, curator, specialist in Russian, linguist, shirt, foreman, fellow, judge, kolobrodin, spiteful person, gaping, protégé, roar, singing, muff, bombing, dunce, stupid, toady, upstart, youngster, dreadful man, poor thing, lame, charming, first-grader, senior, eleven - all these nouns can be used in relation to both sexes.

The widespread cultural distribution of general nouns in the Russian language is also interesting. For example, they were ubiquitous in proverbs and sayings:

A big man in food, but a cripple in work.
There is a deceiver for every simpleton.
A reveler in his youth is modest in his old age.
A drunkard is like a chicken, wherever he steps, he will bite there.

And in literature:

"So a strange deal took place, after which the tramp and the millionaire parted, quite pleased with each other" (Green).
"Good girl, one orphan" (Bazhenov).
“Your cleanliness, as the doctors say, is sterile” (Dubov).
"Redneck! - What? - She staggered back" (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 lesson that is easy to cope with.

Education

Examples of general nouns. What are generic nouns?

11 january 2018

The noun is one of the most frequently used parts of speech. Moreover, such words have a gender, of which there are three in Russian: masculine (dog, house, bow, father), feminine (goat, cat, room, pear) or middle (village, sky, jam, distance). The gender category is one of the permanent features of this part of speech. However, there are a number of exceptions. We offer you to get acquainted with examples of general nouns.

What is genus

This is a constant sign. So, if the number and case can change (for example, the words "cat" - singular and "cats" - plural), then the gender always remains the same. No matter how many cats we are talking about, this word is always feminine.
In plural this category is not expressed in nouns. In this case, if a definition is necessary, the word should be put in unit. h.
Words that are not used in the singular (scissors, stretchers) have no gender.

How to determine

The easiest way to define gender is with pronoun substitution. This is taught in school. For example:

Table, house, wardrobe, chair - it's mine.
The dog, the door, the skirt, the geranium - she's mine.
Butter, milk, plant, composition - it's mine.

Sometimes, over time, a word can change its genus, for example, the word "swan" was previously feminine, but now it is masculine.

Common gender

Let's get acquainted with examples of general nouns and consider what they are. There are a number of words that can be used in relation to a creature of either gender:

Slut.
Clutter.
Crybaby.
Yabed.
Quiet.
Nerd.

From the context it becomes clear what kind of in question... For example:

Tanya was a terrible crybaby and always solved the problem with tears.
Egor was a terrible crybaby and always solved the problem with tears.

The word "crybaby" is an example of a general noun.

Examples of

There are a lot of words that fit into the category of "general nouns". Here are some examples of phrases:

Poor dog - poor Olga.
Know-it-all Maxim - know-it-all Katerina.
Suck (boy, girl).
Gryaznulya (Vanya, Anya).
Glutton (cat, dog).

These are general words. Most often, they have a pronounced emotional coloring, express the speaker's attitude to the subject described by him.

Here are examples of sentences with general nouns:

Little son constantly asked many questions.
Why Julia often puzzled her parents.
Stupid Kirill so often fell into ridiculous situations that they were tired of laughing at him.
This man went down in history as a regicide.

It can be seen from the examples that in their form such words resemble feminine nouns, this is indicated by the endings -a / i, however, when combining, it is necessary to take into account what kind of word they depend on.

First example

The hard worker Petrov received the award. The general word "hard worker" characterizes a man, therefore it also refers to noun. male. The agreed definition should be chosen as appropriate: "conscientious, diligent hard worker."

Another example

Self-taught Aksenova has achieved significant success in scientific activities... Here "self-taught" describes a woman, so the word should be attributed to the feminine gender, the agreed definition would be: "talented, intelligent, hard-working self-taught."

Examples from texts

Here are examples of general nouns from the work of Krylov "The Elephant and the Pug":

So crowds of onlookers followed the Elephant.
I can get into big bullies.

There are two common words here - "onlooker", "bully"; both first declension, plural.

In the fable "The Cat and the Cook" there is another example of a common noun:

Oh, you glutton! ah villain! -
Here the cook reproaches Vaska.

The word "glutton" is used here in a general way.

Another example is from the fable "The Mirror and the Monkey":

Of my gossips, there are five or six such antics.

And again we have an example of a noun of a general gender.

How to avoid mistakes

Often, without context, it becomes difficult to identify which gender a general noun belongs to. For example:

Well, you are an upstart!
You are a loner, you do not know how to work in a team.

Words mean qualitative characteristic a person, however, do not give an indication of his gender. If we supplement the examples with supporting words, the meaning will become clear:

Well, you are an upstart, Misha!
Katya, you are a loner, you do not know how to work in a team.

Thanks to the supporting words, we understand that in the first example the word "upstart" refers to a boy, therefore it is a masculine noun, and in the second - to a girl, because its gender is feminine.

Words of the general gender should be attributed to the masculine gender in the case when they denote a male person, or to the feminine gender when they denote a female person.

A common mistake

Often, schoolchildren can mistake lexical units that denote professions for general nouns:

doctor;
Professor;
geologist;
archaeologist;
librarian;
paleontologist;
surgeon.

They can refer to both men and women, but their gender is always male: Dr. Ivanova, surgeon Smirnova. If it is necessary to agree on an adjective with them, one should remember that they are combined with the masculine form: the talented surgeon Smirnova. The combination of "talented surgeon Smirnov" would be a mistake.

Most of this vocabulary does not have a parallel feminine form, but sometimes in colloquial speech, phrases like "doctor Ivanov" "librarian Savinova" can slip through, which are unacceptable in literary speech.

There are also feminine words in the Russian language, meaning the names of persons by profession: typist, ballerina. If it is necessary to designate a male person, descriptive turns come to the rescue: a ballet dancer.

Proper names

As examples of nouns of a general gender, one can also cite proper names - non-declining surnames of both Russian and foreign origin: Sidorenko, Vidnykh, Grodas.

Diminutive forms also have a common genus, which can refer to people of both sexes: Sasha, Shurochka, as well as abbreviated forms of names: Valya, Sasha.

Generic noun groups

Based on the above material, three groups of names of the general genus can be distinguished:

Common nouns that resemble feminine words in their form, as indicated by the ending -a / i: orphan, clumsy, rascal, sweet tooth. Most often, they have a bright emotional color.
Diminutive proper names referring to both boys and girls: Sanya, Valya, Zhenya.
Invincible surnames: Savchenko, Dumas, Sedykh.

It is important to use general nouns correctly in speech, but most often native speakers understand the meaning of the statement thanks to the supporting words or based on the general meaning of the dialogue.

Generic nouns are a group of nouns that, depending on the context, can be either masculine or feminine nouns.

Among them there can be both common nouns and proper nouns.

Examples of common nouns of a general gender: orphan, filthy, quiet, orphan. You can say both unhappy orphan and unhappy orphan.

Examples of proper names of a common gender are the names Sasha, Shura, Zhenya and others, which can be used both in relation to a woman and in relation to a man. This also includes foreign-language surnames with an ending in a vowel (for example: Morua) and some other surnames (for example, with the ending -YH: Borzykh).

The gender of the imn of nouns in Russian is a lexico-grammatical category that directly refers to the aggregate of masculine (TV), feminine (antenna), neuter (sun) and the so-called general gender (crybaby, clever, egoza).

The last group of words includes many classic examples, when a noun outwardly looks like a feminine word, however, it can be correlated and semantically consistent with words of various parts of speech that have forms of any of the genders.

For example.

Bully Petya now and then clashed with classmates
Bully Masha constantly quarreled with neighbors
The bully sun no longer allowed the last snow to lie quietly and made deep holes in nm.

Generic nouns are words, looking at which it is impossible to determine what gender they belong to. But you can say so, for example:

In the first context, the word ditch used as a masculine noun. And in the second context - as a feminine noun quot ;. Everything depends on the meaning of the sentence and the entire text with a general noun included in it:

Rva Zina cried and cried. A ditch - it is a ditch.
Moat Kostya cried all day long. Moat - he is a moat.

Some universal proper names (Zhenya, Sasha, Valya, Shura, Sima, Bondarenko, Cool, Zherdai). In the same group, you can situational include a number of words denoting a profession (he is a doctor; she is a doctor; he is a janitor, she is a janitor).

But it should be borne in mind that the last examples (with professions) are far from classical and in many cases are erroneous. In the dictionary, the word doctor, for example, will appear with a note about belonging to the male gender. So it is with the janitor. Therefore, one can only say that such words sometimes take upon themselves some functions nouns of a general gender, while not being such.

General nouns in Russian are those nouns that can be used both in masculine and feminine gender, and both grammatically and in meaning are both masculine and feminine (and neuter) nouns. For example: smart, smart - these words are general nouns.

In Russian, nouns usually belong to one of three genders: masculine (city, youth, journeyman), feminine (matrushka, girl, nanny) and middle (lake, crossroads, mumi). But among the nouns of the first declension with the ending -a highlight words general kind which are either masculine or feminine depending on the context:

Confused Tom is always looking for a pen. Confused Kolya asked me for an elastic band.

In the first example, the word confused is feminine, as indicated female name, in the second it is masculine.

The words of the general gender traditionally include nouns: orphan, crybaby, bully, liar, slob, gourmet, antics, singer, freak, crammed, tramp, etc.

The common gender of nouns means that, depending on the adjacent words in the sentence, such nouns can become both masculine and feminine or neuter without changing the spelling.

Such words include a number of nouns, for example, crybaby, workaholic, Sasha, Valya, doctor, incognito, ignorant, etc. Thus, such nouns are immediately visible to the naked eye, since it is impossible to say to which gender they specifically belong.

An example of using generic nouns:

There are a lot of such nouns in the Russian language. Depending on the context in the sentence, they can be either feminine or masculine. And do not be confused by the typically feminine ending a or its absence in some cases.

Examples from professions: doctor, judge, cook, secretary, foreman, director.

Non-declining surnames and abbreviated names: Sasha, Valya, Zhenya, Belykh, Chernenko, Sizykh.

Emotionally colored nouns that give some characteristics of a person: bully, slob, bungler, hard worker, clever, clumsy, fool, gaping, rogue, ignorant.

There are also immutable words such as vis-a-vis, incognito, protege.

Examples of nouns general kind In russian language:

sleepyhead, nehochuha, bully, well done, clever, clever, slob, sucker, mean, hard worker, orphan, baby, fidget.

With these words we can call people of both sexes:

Katyushka dormouse. Pavlik dormouse.

She's a slob. He's a slob.

There are nouns in the Russian language that are neither male nor female. These are general nouns. Such nouns include, for example, words such as good fellow, bully, sleepyhead, sweetheart, ignorant, ignorant and others.

In the Russian language there is such an interesting concept as general nouns.

These are nouns that can be either masculine or feminine, depending on what kind of object they are associated with.

These nouns have 1 declension - that is, they end in A and on I.

They are used to indicate the characteristics of the character of a creature.

For example, dirty, imaginative, clean, etc.

These words can refer to any living creatures whose behavior can be somehow characterized - that is, to people, animals ...

Examples of

1) Masha is quiet!

What a quiet person you are! '' - said the mother to her son.

2) I have a daughter - a crybaby! - my friend complained

Ivan, so you, it turns out, are a crybaby! - the classmates laughed at the boy.

3) Katya, well, you and sleepyhead! '' - said mom

`` Get up, sleepyhead! '' - the grandmother woke up the grandson.

General nouns in the Russian language mean those words of nouns that can be equally well combined with words of both masculine and feminine gender. We can say that these are some kind of intermediate words. Example: Vanya - sleepyhead; Tanya is sleepyhead. SON'S WORD.

Also, these are words such as fidget, quiet, dirty, vagabond.

A special group among nouns is made up of the so-called words of the general gender. Their grammatical originality lies in the fact that the gender of these nouns changes depending on the gender of the person they designate (which means that the gender of the words that agree with them also changes). For example: "- Petr Alekseevich sang with us - and what!" (Turg.); and: "Before he had time to finish, the singer began to play another song, and the girls pulled each other" (L. T); "As a child I was a great roar" (Veres.); and: "It's amazing how much a person can change - a grimy, shaggy roar has become a prominent, intelligent girl" (A. Kozhevn.).

General words include:

1) own not declined nouns- foreign-language surnames for a vowel (Morua, Depardieu, Savary), surnames for a consonant (Sagan, Knipovich), as well as Russian, Slavic surnames in -o (Nesterenko, Durnovo, Zhivago) and -ih / -ih (Borzykh , Empathetic);

2) common non-declining nouns, the vast majority of which make up the names of a person as belonging to any nationality (Bantu, Burundi, Herero, Quechua, Mansi, Udege, Khanty, etc.), as well as some names of persons of different thematic groups (vis-a-vis , protege);

3) unofficial proper declined names in -а / -я (Valya, Genya, Zhenya, Lera, Pasha, Sasha, etc.);

4) common noun declined nouns in -а / -я, which in the overwhelming majority characterize a person by inclination, addiction to something, by any character trait, etc. and characteristic mainly of the oral-colloquial style (bully, antics, mumbled, ignorant, idiot, crybaby, drunkard, idiot, cunning, etc.). Some stylistically neutral words (singer, bookseller, orphan) and book colleague adjoin them.

From evaluative words of a general kind (such as a spiteful person, a rascal, a sly), one should distinguish words-characteristics such as a raven, a fox, a rag, an ulcer. Their characteristic evaluative meaning arose as a result of metaphorical transfer, and therefore they retain the gender (feminine) of their direct meaning even when they are used in relation to a male person. For example: "Yesterday in this Variety (unprintable words) some viper magician did a session with the gold pieces ..." (M. Bulg.). A number of words ending in -а are nouns of the masculine (and not general) gender: bouncer, bully, fellow, bosses, rake, defrocked, cut-throat, shirt (as an application: shirt-guy), headman, foreman, judge, master of ceremonies. In some cases, the belonging of words precisely and only to the masculine gender is explained by the nature of the occupation of the person as requiring a large physical strength(bouncer, bouncer) or as once inherent or generally only in a man (cut-throat, defrocked, toastmaster), in others - by the tradition of using the characteristic only in relation to a man (fellow, bosses, rake, shirt), in the third - by grammatical tradition (head , foreman, judge).

Note. The names of professions, positions, titles, etc. always remain masculine nouns. to a consonant (doctor, geologist, director, sergeant), which are used in relation to persons of both sexes. Calling the position, profession, etc., occupied by a woman, such words dictate their gender (masculine) to the definitions they use (adjectives, participles: "famous geologist", "medical practitioner"). The predicate can have the form of not only masculine, but also feminine ("the doctor prescribed treatment," "the director is outraged by this statement," "the cashier was right"). Wed, for example: "- I understand why my editor rejected the script: it was almost impossible to get money for its implementation" (Dom Kino. 1990. May).

General nouns ending in -а / -я in modern speech often serve as a characteristic of objects or animals, birds, fish, etc. For example: "On a hot afternoon, kneel down, bend over the little tree, and your nostrils will catch the young and delicate smell of pine resin" (M. Shol.); "There are buses, cargo taxis, and just taxis, and" private traders ", that is, someone's personal cars, but most of all business workers are cars" (Vl. Sol.); "The grapes are beginning to ripen, and the birds' gourmets are busy looking for brown grains" (Seraph.). What is the kind of such words-characteristics and definitions to them? Since in such uses, nouns of a general gender act as a pictorial personifying means, i.e. they liken an inanimate object or animal to a person, insofar as the grammatical gender of the name of the object (animal) becomes a kind of indicator of "sex". This means that, used in relation to objects (animals), general nouns should have definitions in grammatical forms of the same gender (masculine or feminine) to which the names of the objects they characterize belong. For example: “There, in a stuffy wheatgrass, in a wild curly clover, braids tinkled, a diligent hard worker sailed over the people” (Fad.); “The air conditioner works all night long. All day long a tireless hard worker is making a muffled noise in the corner” (Lit. Gaz. 1981, No. 41); "She is a very big sissy, this car" (N. Tikh.). If the name of an object refers to the middle genus (little tree), and it does not correspond to the real, biological sex, then the definition for a general noun characterizing such an object should be in the form of the feminine gender: "Melon tree is a big sissy." This form is dictated by the morphological "appearance" of a general noun (with the ending -а: sissy).

Rakhmanova L.I., Suzdaltseva V.N. Modern Russian language. - M, 1997.

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