It is generally known that the lexical system is the most flexible one, which could be connected with its nature, its ability to reflect extra-linguistic realities. Following the changes in people"s lives and reacting promptly to these changes, usuall...
It is generally known that the lexical system is the most flexible one, which could be connected with its nature, its ability to reflect extra-linguistic realities. Following the changes in people"s lives and reacting promptly to these changes, usually it is a vocabulary (not a grammar) that is replenished with new units. However, this does not mean that other levels of the language remain stable and unchanged. This article attempts to explore the mechanism of functioning of the grammatical category of gender of nouns in the modern Russian language. Taking several lexical-semantic groups of nouns as an example, we demonstrate the influence of extra-linguistic factors on fluctuations of gender. The paper is about the category of the gender of nouns in the process of redistribution of its composition. The study verifies the hypothesis that there are two tendencies: under the influence of Americanization, there become more masculine nouns in the Russian literary language. Simultaneously, due to the influence of the conversational style, the words of the feminine gender replace the ones of the masculine and neuter gender.