A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH GENDER

Abstract

Gender is the classification of nouns and pronouns according to the sex (or the absence of sex) denoted (Harman, 1973 : 20). The word gender (from latin genus) means race of kind, and in Indo European Language it is always an expression of sex distinction (Harman, 1973: 20). Actually, there are three kinds of gender, masculine, feminine, and neuter, through some members of indo European family only have two of them, masculine and feminine. In French, gender is not always expression of sex distinction because nouns whick have no sex are considered to have sex. So there is no neuter gender, whick usually denotes to a lack of sex.