PRONOUNS AS MARKERS OF GENDER REPRESENTATION IN RUSSIAN AND UZBEK CHILD SPEECH: A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

This article examines the acquisition and use of pronouns as markers of gender identity in children's speech. Pronouns constitute one of the earliest and most explicit linguistic means through which children express gender categorization and develop their understanding of gender as a social category. The paper analyzes the ontogenesis of pronominal gender markers in Russian and English, considering both the grammatical challenges children face and the sociopragmatic dimensions of pronoun use. Special attention is paid to the emergence of personal pronouns (he/she), the development of possessive forms (his/her), and the phenomenon of "feminine gender preference" observed in early Russian child speech. The study also addresses contemporary issues of gender-neutral pronoun use, children's memory for gendered versus neutral forms, and the role of speech input in shaping children's gender-pronoun associations. The author concludes that the acquisition of pronominal gender marking is a complex process involving both grammatical rule-learning and the gradual internalization of culturally-specific gender norms.