Научная статья на тему 'Gender as the nаtional grammatical category in linguistics'

Gender as the nаtional grammatical category in linguistics Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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Ключевые слова
GENDER / GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF GENDER / NOMINAL CLASSES

Аннотация научной статьи по языкознанию и литературоведению, автор научной работы — Abduvahabova Mahina Azatovna

Gender is a grammatical category. As it is totally absent in English, a lot of English-speaking linguists and enthusiasts of linguistics (who are evidently too lazy to study foreign and classical languages) have serious problems with understanding it correctly. As the result, they create bizarre theories, not compatible with the long tradition and sometimes even with common sense. The aim of this article is to show some of more common errors in understanding gender.

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Текст научной работы на тему «Gender as the nаtional grammatical category in linguistics»

GENDER AS THE NATIONAL GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY

IN LINGUISTICS Abduvahabova M.A.

Abduvahabova Mahina Azatovna - Senior Teacher, DEPARTMENT OF THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE UNDER THE ENGLISH LANGUAGES, FACULTY 3, UZBEKISTAN STATE WORLD LANGUAGES UNIVERSITY, TASHKENT, REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN

Abstract: gender is a grammatical category. As it is totally absent in English, a lot of English-speaking linguists and enthusiasts of linguistics (who are evidently too lazy to study foreign and classical languages) have serious problems with understanding it correctly. As the result, they create bizarre theories, not compatible with the long tradition and sometimes even with common sense. The aim of this article is to show some of more common errors in understanding gender.

Keywords: gender, grammatical category of gender, nominal classes.

One important notice is needed before discussing the main subject. Namely, English-speaking authors, especially those from the U.S.A., are famous for making medleys of well-known notions and meanings. It is hard to explain why it is so [1]. Perhaps some of them are simply undereducated, and write their papers not having understood the common use of notions they apply. Perhaps others mix meanings in purpose because they want to become famous by publishing a new hypothesis together with a new notional apparatus, made of old notions with new meanings. Perhaps they want to break the Greek-Latin tradition, and to replace it by a new one, their own, that is the American one.

Nouns, substantives, adjectives

Here is an example of the mess in linguistic notional apparatus caused by American authors. As it will appear in following parts of the article, the example is connected directly to the problem of gender. In the traditional grammar terminology which is continued in many European countries, nouns (Lat. nomina) are understood as declinable a part of speech that is as substantives, adjectives, some numerals and some pronouns altogether. From the beginning of the 20th century, some American authors started to understand nouns as substantives only. It was a pity that some authors tried to break the nomenclatoric convention which had been living for a very long time. It is not known for what they needed it. Anyway, the new "style" of understanding nouns spread like the plague, and now some titled scholars in linguistic do not even realize that the word "noun" does not mean what they think it does. Evidently they have not read even one of older grammars written by their colleagues who lived only some tens of years ago. If they knew older bibliography, they would realize that, for instance, both words in "good man" should be termed nouns, in accordance with the Latin tradition, still present in almost all countries except the English speaking ones (which have followed the new bad American tradition). The first word of the given example ("good") is called an adjective while the second one ("man") is termed a substantive.

Unfortunately in many newer works only "man" is called a noun while "good" is not. This causes no common term for both substantives (incorrectly termed "nouns") and adjectives. Indeed, these two classes of words (parts of speech) have little in common in English. But English is not a typical language in this point, and especially it differs from other Indo-European languages in which adjectives and substantives have much in common. The same is in many Uralic, Altaic or Afro-Asiatic languages. Even if joining substantives and adjectives in one superclass (of nouns) is not well-founded for each language of the world, also the new English-based style of emphasizing only differences between both classes is not well-founded. And it is especially groundless for most Indo-European (and

Semitic) languages in which actual, especially morphological differences between substantives and adjectives may be really inconsiderable.

There is general agreement that genders are not the only possible classes of substantives -thus it is not true that we always have a gender system if substantives influence the form of anything else in the sentence [2]. In various languages, substantives may be classified according to various criteria. In morphologic typology, not less than four groups are distinguished [3]:

1. languages which have the category of gender (most Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic languages),

2. classificatory languages (languages with noun classes: Bantu, some American Indian, some Caucasian languages),

3. languages which have classifiers (Japanese, Chinese),

4. languages which do not belong to any of these three groups (i.e. without gender, noun classes and classifiers, e.g. English or Hungarian).

The first three groups have various nominal classes (in a wider sense; they should not be confused with Bantu-like noun classes). Despite of the above classification, some English-speaking authors term most or even all of them genders. In other words, the result of terming, for instance, Bantu classes' genders is that we stop seeing differences between them.

There are also nominal classes which are not present in the above classification. Hungarian is known for having no gender, no noun classes and no classifiers at all. Even the Hungarian pronoun o means 'he' / 'she' / 'it' without difference. But there are distinctions between ki 'who' and mi 'what' and between hanyan 'how many people' and hany 'how many things' there. Similar phenomena may be present in each single language.

References

1. Deaux K. Sex and Gender //Annual Review of Psychologe, 1985. № 36. P. 49-81.

2. Falcon A. Big Girl in a Skinny World // Marie Claire (USA), 2009. November. P. 62-63.

3. WeatherallA. Gender, Language and Discourse. N.Y.: Routledge, 2002.

БОГАТОЕ НАСЛЕДИЕ, ОСТАВЛЕННОЕ ПРЕДКАМИ

Камалова Д.О.

Камалова Дилфуза Обидовна - преподаватель русского языка, кафедра языков,

Бухарский инженерно-технологический институт, г. Бухара, Республика Узбекистан

Аннотация: в статье рассматривается вопрос положительного влияния педагогических взглядов великих мыслителей востока на подрастающее поколение. Ключевые слова: воспитание, педагогика, наука, великие предки, любовь к народу, труд.

Народная педагогика - составная и неотъемлемая часть общей духовной культуры народа. Слова великого русского педагога К.Д.Ушинского о том, что «воспитание существует в русском народе столь же веков, сколько существует сам народ», целиком относятся к другим народам. Вместе с тем она предполагает, что народная педагогика возникла в глубокой древности, что она исторически предшествовала научной педагогике и влияла на ее ранние формы.

Культура и образование Средневековья всегда вызывали интерес и широко освещались в истории педагогики. Большое количество работ, посвящённых этой эпохе, включает и советская, и постсоветская, и зарубежная история педагогики и как наука, и как учебный предмет. Изменения социальной жизни общества повлекли за собой пересмотр сущности образования, благодаря которому следует обратиться к опыту Средневековых педагогов. При создании новой образовательной системы

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