Category of Case

The category of case in present-day English has always been disputable. Some grammarians found in present-day English two cases, others found in English four, and still other grammarians were inclined to see in English five, six and more cases. As to Ukrainian nouns they may have 6 or 7 marked singular and plural oppositions in the nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative case, eg: хмара, хмари, хмарі, хмару, хмарою, (на) хмарі, хмаро (first decl.), vocative case; or in plural: степи, степів, степам, степи, степам, степами, (у) степах, степи (second decl., vocative case).

No identity exists in the contrasted languages in the expression of the category of gender either and many languages make these distinctions different and unequal. Thus, in Ukrainian, Russian, German and other languages there are three grammatical genders — masculine, feminine, and neuter. In Italian, Spanish, French, Danish — two genders (masculine and feminine), in Estonian, Finnish, Japanese and Turkic languages no gender distinctions are made, but in the Bantu language there are about 42 genders realised with the help various inflexions.

The morphological category of gender in Ukrainian is identified either through separate inflexions of the adjunct/attribute or through the inflexion of the finite form of the verb that conjugates with a noun. In present-day English no gender distinctions of the kind are possible.

The form of the verbal predicate, therefore, does not reflect or in any way testify to the existence of any gender distinction in the three above-given nouns. This is not so in Ukrainian. Cf. актор грав/був, актриса грала/була, дитя грало/було, дитя грає/буває, etc.

Absence of the morphological category of gender in English is also easy to be proved by the unchanged attributive adjuncts to nouns which have this category in Ukrainian, eg:

the great emperor lived long — великий імператор жив довго the great heroine lived long — велика героїня жила довго the great de-sire lived long — велике бажання жило довго. The adjective "great" does not reflect any sex or gender distinction of the English head nouns "emperor", "heroine" or "desire" as it is in Ukrainian ("великий імператор", "велика героїня", "велике бажання"). Unlike English, the categorial meaning of the gender category and the objective/extralingual category of sex are distinctly indicated by the verbal predicate in Ukrainian: "імператор жив", "героїня жила", "бажання жило".

The morphological category of gender and the objective (natural) category of sex may also be indicated in Ukrainian by the following means: a) by a marked inflexion in the nominative case (книжка, село, яйце, батько, мати, сестра); b) by the zero inflexion (дуб, час, ніч, річ, вість); с) by suffixes only or by the root suffixes + endings (робітник, вівчар, стрілець, орач, вчительк-а, робітниц-я, по-етес-а, поетик-а); d) by means of a modifying word: наше київське метро (кашне, кіно), цей кабальєро, такий великий ґну, гарний поні, etc.

The possessive conjoint or possessive absolute pronouns, however, may sometime be used in English to indicate the extralingual category of sex, eg: the bear and his life, that actress and her voice, his child and its toys, the desire of mine/hers, those friends of hers, etc.

Appositional pronouns and nouns are used to indicate the sex of living beings as in boy-friend - girl-friend. English suffixes -ist, -er/-or, -ess, -o, -ine can not express the morphological gender (but only sex) as in emperor, widower, actress, goddess, and many other living beings.

All lifeless things in English, unlike Ukrainian and some other languages, are generally associated with the pronoun it (the neuter gender). Cf. The tree and its leaves; the carbonic acid and its use, etc.

In Ukrainian each noun irrespective of its being a life or lifeless thing, belongs to a concrete gender. Thus, the stone (камінь) like the wolf or bull is masculine (he він), the carbonic acid or the star, the river, the cow have feminine gender (річка, зірка). Similarly with many life and lifeless nouns having neuter gender distinctions (cf. життя, сміття, курча).

When personified, English life and lifeless nouns may be referred to different genders. Thus, the Reed in the Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde became feminine and the Swallow who fell in love with it became (was personified by the author) masculine (he). The names of vessels (boat, ship) and vehicles (car, carriage) are usually associated with famine gender.