ON THE PROBLEM OF NOMINATIVENESS OF THE GENUS CATEGORY OF ANIMATE NOUNS

Abstract

The article considers the category of gender as one of the most difficult nominal categories of the Russian language for foreign students. It is noted that the determination of the gender of nouns is a difficult problem, since the gender of inanimate nouns belongs to a purely grammatical sphere, and for animate nouns, the definition of gender is much more difficult. The nominative component of the grammatical category of gender is manifested in Russian only in animate nouns. At the same time, the grammatical gender of zoonyms differs significantly from the gender of nouns denoting people. The article proposes a more detailed classification of zoonyms compared to the traditional one: five groups of them are identified in terms of gender. As a result, an attempt was made to predictive sociolinguistic analysis of the establishment of the kind of zoonyms, which can help in explaining this complex topic to foreign students.