NOUN: GENDER 

A.I.Smirnitsky devoted ten pages of his "Morphology of English" to proving the non-existence of gender in English either in the grammatical, or even in the strictly lexico -grammatical sense.

That the gender division of nouns in English is expressed not as variable forms of words, but as nounal classification (which is not different from the expression of substantive gender in other languages, including Russian), admits of no argument.

The category of gender is expressed in English by the obligatory correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns of the third person.

The category of gender is strictly oppositional. It is formed by two opposition s  related to each other on a hierarchical basis.

One opposition functions in the whole set of nouns, dividing them into person (human) nouns and non-person ( non-human) nouns. 

The other opposition functions in the subset of person nouns only, dividing them into masculine nouns and feminine nouns. Thus, the first, general opposition can be referred to as the upper opposition in the category of gender, while the second, partial opposition can be referred to as the lower opposition in this category.

To be continued.