The NOUN 1 General characteristics and classification 2

The NOUN 1 General characteristics and classification 2 Grammatical categories 3 Combinability and functions in the sentence Рекомендуется к использованию при изучении дисциплины «Теоретическая грамматика английского языка» Составитель: Познякова Т. М.

CRITERIA for the division of words into parts of speech: Semantic (meaning) Formal (form) derivational features a set of gram. categories Functional (function) function in the sentence combinability

Semantic features (meaning) The noun is main nominative part of speech expressing substance by which we mean - names of lifeless things (tree, window), - living beings (woman, bird), - places (city, London, Belarus), - materials (gold, oil), - processes and states (life, growth, sleep, consciousness), - abstract notions (socialism, joy, evil, happiness) - qualities (kindness, courage).

Formal criterion: derivational features • Typical stem-building morphemes: Dent-ist, teach-er, friend-ship, develop-ment, lion-ess, secur-ity, ag-ism, address-ee etc. • Stem-structure: Simple derivative composite compound

Formal criterion: a set of grammatical categories • Number (friend-friends, tooth – teeth, ox-oxen) • Case (child – children’s, the USA – the. USA’s, friends – friends’) • Gender (widow – widower, lion – lioness, he-cat – she-cat) • Article determination (a book – the book – books, weather – the weather, a deer – the deer - deer)

Combinability depends on the lexicalgrammatical meaning Nouns are associated with qualities (adjectives), their number and order (numerals), their actions (verbs ), relations (prepositions). Nouns have left-hand connections with articles (a day), some pronouns (my friend ), most adjectives (good relations ), numerals (two visitors ). With prepositions nouns have both left-hand righthand connections ( to Moscow, a friend of mine)

The problem of the N+N construction A. I. Smirnitsky and O. S. Akhmanova regard these units as a kind of unstable compounds easily developing into word-combinations. • The first components, they say, are not nouns since: - they are not used in the plural (cf. a rose garden and a garden of roses). The first components are noun-stems convertible into adjectives (adjectivization) - Nouns are used as attributes only in the possessive case or with a preposition.

Functions in the sentence • The most characteristic substantive functions of the noun are - the subject and the object in the sentence, • Other syntactic functions, i. e. attributive e. g. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? adverbial e. g. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? predicative e. g. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? are not immediately characteristic of its substantive quality.

Classification From the grammatical point of view • countables and uncountables (with regard to the category of number) Countable nouns can agree with the verb in the singular and in the plural; they can take the indefinite article, they are used with the indefinite pronouns many or (a) few: • declinables and indeclinables (with regard to the category of case) Declinables take the form of the ? ?

Semantic classification • proper – common (week – Sunday), • abstract – concrete – collective (meaning – table – family), • countable – uncountable (days – fruit), • animate – inanimate (dog – sofa), • personal - non-personal (The Smiths – a human),

The category of number 1 it is accepted by all the scholars 2 It is expressed by the opposition of the plural form to the singular form of the noun: king- – kings+ singular only to the plural only singularia tantum - pluralia tantum snow, joy -police, trousers.

The category of case • In English the only morphologically marked case admitted by many linguists is the Possessive case: e. g. dolphin – dolphin's; Dickens - Dickens’ Common - Genitive? Common – possessive – Genitive ? The discussion of the case problem is still an open question

1) the inflection -‘s is but loosely connected with the noun (e. g. the Queen of England’s daughter; the man I met yesterday’s son); 2) genitive constructions are paralleled by corresponding prepositional constructions (e. g. Shakespeare’s works vs. the works of Shakespeare); 3) the use of the genitive is mainly limited to nouns denoting living beings; 4) the inflection -‘s is used both in the singular and in the plural (e. g. a boy’s bicycle vs. the boys’ bicycles), which is not typical of case inflexions.

The main theories: 1) The limited case theory 2) The positional case theory 3) The prepositional case theory 4) There is NO CASE in English Other approaches: - ‘s is a syntactic formant - Apostrophe is a punctuation mark - ‘S + N is an analytical form of the noun

The semantic case concept (developed by C. J. Fillmore in the late 1960 s) There are 6 cases: 1. Agentive Case (A) John opened the door; 2. Instrumental case (I) The key opened the door; John used the key to open the door; 3. Dative Case (D) John believed that he would win (the case of the animate being affected by the state of action identified by the verb); 4. Factitive Case (F) The house was built (the result of the action or state identified by the verb); 5. Locative Case (L) Chicago is windy; 6. Objective case (O) John stole the book.

The syntactic case concept (the grammars of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome) The main role of the Case is to indicate a relationship between constituents, i. e. to indicate a construction in Syntax the genitive is a case which marks one noun as dependent on another, e. g. John’s car. the case is a marker of a syntactic relation or a construction. Prescriptivists spoke of the nominative, dative, genitive, accusative, and the ablative.

H. Sweet’s views (1925) • case to him is a syntactic relation that can be realized syntactically or morphologically. He speaks of inflected and non-inflected cases (the genitive vs. the common case). Non-inflected cases, according to the scholar, are equivalent to the nominative, vocative, accusative, and dative of inflected languages.

R. W. Pence (1947), H. Whitehall (1965), H. Shaw (1952) Speak about three cases in English - nominative, genitive (possessive) and accusative (objective). This three-case system, based on the analogy of the form of pronouns, remained extremely popular in the grammars of the 20 th century, including some structural grammars (H. Whitehall)

In modern linguistics the term “genitive case” is used instead of the “possessive case” because the meanings rendered by the “`s” sign are not only those of possession. The scope of meanings rendered by the Genitive Case is the following: 1. Possessive Genitive : Mary’s father – Mary has a father, 2. Subjective Genitive: The doctor’s arrival – The doctor has arrived, 3. Objective Genitive : The man’s release – The man was released, 4. Genitive of origin: the boy’s story – the boy told the story, 5. Descriptive Genitive: children’s books – books for children 6. Genitive of measure and partitive genitive: a mile’s distance, a day’s trip 7. Appositive genitive: the city of London.

The category of gender • Gender does not find any morphological expression in English!!! • The distinction of male, female and neuter can be understood from - the lexical meaning (a man- a woman), - the use of personal pronouns he, she, it which replace the noun - the use of derivational suffixes (a waiter-waitress), - compounding (a she-crab soup), (a man-servant).

The category of article determination • The problem of English articles is a long debated question. The most disputable aspects are the following: - the status of the article as a language unit; - the number of articles - categorical and pragmatic functions of the articles.

What language level does the article belong to? • The article is a WORD • The article is A WORD-MORPHEME “A stone” is a phrase (a “A stone” is an analytical word-combination) “A” is a determiner/article (a form of the word “storm”; functional part of speech) the paradigm of the word “stone” consists of 4 words, they are ? ? ? (write the paradigm)

Arguments 1) The position of the article can be occupied by other words: demonstrative and possessive pronouns, numerals, nouns in the possessive case etc. Words which have distribution similar to the article are called determiners. 2) The role of a determiner is to specify the range of reference to the noun by making it definite or indefinite. 3) The article plays an important role in structuring information. It is one of the means of distinguishing between facts already known – theme, and new information – the rheme. The definite article is the marker of theme and the indefinite article is the marker of the rheme. 1) 2) 3) The Russian word “pyk” means the plural of the word “pyka” in the genetive case. Similarly, the form “children” means the plural, common case, indefinite. There are no syntactic relations between, for ex. “a” and “person” in “a person” Continue the list, SEE THE CRITERIA for the definition of a wordmorpheme

How many articles are there in English? • Two - Definite article - Indefinite article Three (a, the and a Zero-article ) - Definite article - indefinite article - Zero-article, (often treated as the “omission of the article” or the absence of the article. “The absence of the article is a special kind of article, which is termed “zero article”.