D. V. Demidov

possessive postposition‖, or ―the theory of no case‖ states that 
the category of case was completely lost by the noun in the course 
of its historical development. The proponents of this theory 
(G. N. Vorontsova, A. M. Mukhin [20, p. 164]) maintain that the 
inflectional genitive case form is actually a combination of the 

---

61 
noun with a postposition denoting possession. The main 
arguments to support this point of view are as follows: first, the 
postpositional element ‗s is not only used with words, but also 
with word-combinations and sentences, e.g.: his daughter Mary‟s 
arrival, the man I saw yesterday‟s face; it may be used with no 
noun at all, but with a pronoun, e.g.: somebody else‟s car; second, 
the same meaning of possession is rendered by prepositional of-
phrases, e.g.: this man‟s daughter – the daughter of this man. The 
followers of this approach conclude that –s is no longer an 
inflection, but a particle- like postpositional word, so, ―noun +–‗s‖ 
is not a morphological form of the noun, but a syntactical 
construction. 
5. The meaningful character of the gender category in 
modern English. Gende r oppositions and classes of nouns.
The category of gender in English is a highly controversial 
subject in grammar. The majority of linguists stick to the opinion 
that the category of gender existed only in O ld English. They 
maintain that in modern English, the biological division of 
masculine and feminine genders is rendered only by lexical 
means: special words and lexical affixes, e.g.: man – woman, 
tiger – tigress, he-goat – she-goat, male nurse, etc. 
In the English language gender is a meaningful category for 
the whole class of the nouns, because it reflects the real gender 
attributes (or their absence/ irrelevance) of the referent denoted. It is 
realized through obligatory correspondence of every noun with the 
3rd person singular pronouns – he, she, or it: man – he, woman – she, 
tree, dog – it. For example: A woman was standing on the platform. 
She was wearing a hat. It was decorated with ribbons and flowers… 
Personal pronouns are grammatical gender classifiers in English.
The category of gender is formed by two oppositions 
organized hierarchically. The first opposition is general and 

---

62 
opposes human, or person nouns, distinguishing masculine and 
feminine gender (man – he, woman – she) and all the other, non-
human, non-person nouns, belonging to the neuter gender (tree, 
dog – it). The second opposition is formed by the human nouns 
only: on the lower level of the opposition the nouns of masculine 
gender and of feminine gender are opposed. 
GEN DER 
+ –
Person Nouns Non-person Nouns 
+ –
Feminine nouns Masculine nouns 
Gender is a constant feature category: it is expressed not 
through variable forms of words, but through nounal 
classification; each noun belongs to only one of the three genders. 
In addition, there is a group of nouns in English which can denote 
either a female or a male in different contexts; these nouns can be 
substituted by either ‗he‘ or ‗she‘, e.g.: president, professor, 
friend, etc. They constitute a separate group of nouns – the 
common gender nouns. 
There are no formal marks to distinguish the strong and the 
weak members in either of the gender oppositions. They can be 
distinguished semantically: nouns of the neuter gender in the 
upper level of the opposition is more abstract compared to 
masculine and feminine gender nouns; they are the weak member 
of the opposition and are naturally used in the position of 
neutralization, e.g.: The girl was a sweet little thing. On the lower 
level of the opposition, masculine gender nouns are the weak 
member of the opposition and can be used to denote all human 
beings irrespective of sex, e.g.: Man must change in the changing 

---

63 
world. When there is no contextual need to specify the sex of the 
referent, common gender nouns are also neutrally substituted by 
the masculine pronoun, e.g.: Every student must do his best.