THE NOUN AND ITS CATEGORIES
Definition: - the main nominative unit of speech The categorical meaning of the noun is ‘substance’ or ‘thingness’
NOUN semantic morphological syntactical
SEMANTIC CHARACTERISTICS
Consider: Proper or Common? • • There’s an Alice on the phone. Is that the Alice you told me about? There’s a Broadway in almost every city. The Broadway I’m referring to is in New York City.
Countable or Uncountable? a) • She likes lemon in her tea. • I taste onion in the salad. b) • Would you like tea? c) • Here’s a lemon. • There’s a large onion in the salad. • Would you like a green tea or a black tea? He has a courage equaled by few of his contemporaries. A knowledge of English is needed for this job.
MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES simple derived compound
MORPHOLOGICAL CATEGORIES NUMBER CASE
THE CATEGORY OF NUMBER • • • Oneness vs. non-oneness Unmarked vs. Marked Regular vs. Irregular Plurals Variable vs Invariable nouns Singularia tantum vs. Pluralia tantum
INVARIABLES SINGULAR vs. PLURAL • • • Uncountable nouns Abstract Proper nouns Nouns ending in –ics Names of certain diseases • • Summation plurals Unmarked plural nouns Pluralia tantum in –s Some proper nouns
THE CATEGORY OF CASE • A marker of syntactic relation: H. Sweet: inflected vs. non-inflected (genitive vs. common) non-inflected: nominative, vocative, accusative, dative O. Jespersen: genitive vs. common G. O. Curme: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive
THE CATEGORY OF CASE Fillmore: syntactic- semantic classification Agentive: John opened the door. Instrumental: The key opened the door. Factitive (Affected/Patient): The key was damaged. Locative: Chicago is windy. Objective: John stole the book.
GENITIVE CASE (semantic relations between the constituents) • POSSESSIVE GENITIVE (a has b): Mary’s father • SUBJECTIVE GENITIVE (a does b): the doctor’s arrival • OBJECTIVE GENITIVE: the man’s release: (the man was released) • GENITIVE OF ORIGIN : the girl’s story (the girl told the story) • EQUATION GENITIVE (GENITIVE OF MEASURE) : ten days’ absence • DESCRIPTIVE GENITIVE : women’s college
GENITIVE CASE • Group genitive: Mum and Dad’s room • Absolute genitive: Our house is better than Mary’s. the cousin of my husband’s; St Paul’s At Timothy’s
Specific features of genitive • the inflection ‘s is but loosely connected with the noun: the Queen of England’s daughter; the man I met yesterday’s son • genitive constructions are parallel to corresponding prepositional construction: Shakespeare’s works // works of Shakespeare • the use of genitive is mainly limited to nouns denoting living beings;
CASE THEORIES: • 1)the theory of positional cases, which identifies the syntactic position with the case; • 2)the theory of prepositional cases, which treats prepositional constructions as analylical cases; • 3)the theory of limited cases, which recognises a two-case system; • 4)the theory of “null” case, which argues that English has completely lost the category of case.
Gender • Lexic-semantic means: man-woman • Syntactic means (be the addition of a word): grandfather-grandmother she cat -he cat • by the use of suffixes: host-hostess
Syntactic Functions: • Subject: The stone is cold. • Direct Object: I took the stone. • Indirect Object: He broke the window with a stone. • Attribute: a stone wall • Predicative: It is a stone.
В 1: Define the gender characteristics of the following nouns - teacher, smoke, landlord, hostess. A. feminine B. neuter gender C. common gender -D. masculine – 2. Identify the meaning of the genitive: children’s language; an hour’s drive 3. Identify the syntactic function: A dog is a man’s best friend. В 2: Define the gender characteristics of the following nouns - conductor, house, Tom-cat, heroine. A. feminine B. neuter gender C. common gender -D. masculine – 2. Identify the meaning of the genitive: at my uncle’s; the car’s wheel 3. Identify the syntactic function: I found him an excellent listener. В 3: Define the gender characteristics of the following nouns - doctor, bull, usherette, ship. A. feminine B. neuter gender C. common gender -D. masculine – 2. Identify the meaning of the genitive: the family’s support; the children’s room 3. Identify the syntactic function: Twelve dollars are enough for the man.