Nouns. Semantic groups and grammatical categories. The category of determination. The problems of the article

party
, 
government
, 
police
, etc) and also of animals (
cattle
, 
poultry
) which can be used in two different ways: either 

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they are taken to denote the group as a whole, or else they are taken to denote the group as 
consisting of a number of individuals 
(e. g. 
My family is small — My family are early risers
).
As far as the category of 
gender
is concerned, most scholars (both in Russia and abroad) 
agree that English makes very few gender distinctions, and the Modern English noun does not 
have the category of grammatical gender. Nevertheless, the opposite views can be found in 
linguistic literature. According to M. Y. Blokh the category of gender is expressed in English by 
the obligatory correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns of the third person: 
he
, 
she
, 
it. 
This 
category is regarded by M. Y. Blokh as being strictly oppositional, formed by two oppositions 
related to each other in a hierarchy: 
Gender 
+ 
(a strong member) 
Person nouns 
substituted by 
he 
/ 
she 
− 
(a weak member) 
Non-person nouns 
substituted by 
it 
Neuter Gender 
– 
Masculine Nouns 
substituted by 
he 
Masculine Gender 
+ 
Feminine Nouns 
substituted by 
she 
Feminine Gender 
This interpretation, however, is open to criticism. First, the principle of binary privative 
opposition has not been correctly applied here. Both strong and weak members are marked. 
Second, a great many person nouns in English are capable of expressing both feminine and 
masculine genders, e. g. 
person
, 
parent
, 
friend
, 
cousin
, 
doctor
, 
teacher
, 
manager
, etc. Third, in 
the plural forms the gender distinctions are neutralized. There is another approach, typical of some 
British and American scholars. They identify the grammatical category of gender with a few closed 
groups of English nouns, e. g. kinship terms ( 
father — mother
, 
son — daughter
, 
brother — sister
, 
husband — wife
, 
uncle — aunt
, etc). The other groups include: 
man — woman
, 
boy — girl
, 
gentleman — lady
, 
king — queen
, or, else, 
cock — hen
, 
bull — cow
, etc. The problem with such 
words is that the biological sex distinctions are expressed here on the lexical level. It is the lexical 
meaning of these words which is responsible for the gender differentiations; no morphological 
correlations can be found with them. On the other hand, there are several non-productive suffixal 
formations of the type: 
actor — actress
, 
host — hostess
, 
waiter — waitress
, 
duke — duchess
, 
prophet — prophetess
, 
lion — lioness
, etc. They are grammatically relevant and may be interesting 
in a diachronic study as the evidence of some former trends in the English language development. 
However, they are exceptional and cannot build up any grammatically significant paradigm within 
the Modern English noun system. The conclusion is that there is no grammatical category of 
gender in Modern English.