Добавил:
Upload Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз: Предмет: Файл:
VASILINA.docx
Скачиваний:
163
Добавлен:
17.04.2019
Размер:
132.84 Кб
Скачать

10. Morphological categories of Noun (number, case)

The category of number is proper to count nouns only.

The grammatical category of number is the linguistic representation of the objective category of quantity. The number category is realized through the opposition of two form-classes: the plural form & the singular form. The category of number in English is restricted in its realization because of the dependent implicit grammatical meaning of countableness/uncountableness. The number category is realized only within subclass of countable nouns. Uncountable nouns can be singular OR plural. Subclasses of uncountablenouns constitute a lexical-grammatical opposition: singular only (snow, news) &plural only (contents, police).

The singular form may denote: oneness (individual separate object); generalization (the meaning of the whole class ); uncountableness - money, milk, gold).

The plural form may denote: the existence of several objects (cats); the inner discreteness (pluraliatantum: jeans, trousers).

To sum it up, all nouns may be subdivided into three groups:

  1. The nouns in which the opposition of explicit discreteness/indiscreteness is expressed : cat::cats;

  2. The nouns in which this opposition is not expressed explicitly but is revealed by syntactical and lexical correlation in the context. There are 2 groups here: Singulariatantum - covers different groups of nouns: proper names (Wales), abstract nouns (advice,knowledge), material nouns (gold), names of sciences (physics), names of diseases (measles), games (darts) Pluraliatantum - covers the names of objects consisting of several parts (jeans), collective nouns (clergy, police, the rich, the poor)& some other nouns(clothes, outskirts, contents, customs).

  3. The nouns with homogenous number forms. The number opposition here is not expressed formally but is revealed only lexically and syntactically in the context:sheep

The category of case.

Case is a morphological category, which has a distinct syntactic significance as it expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word-group or sentence (my sister’s coat). The case category in English is realized through the opposition: The Common Case :: The Possessive Case (sister :: sister’s). Other meanings are expressed by word order & prepositions. 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 Genitive Case is the following: Possessive Genitive : Mary’s father – Mary has a father,

Subjective Genitive: The doctor’s arrival – The doctor has arrived, Objective Genitive : The man’s release – The man was released, Adverbial Genitive : Two hour’s work – X worked for two hours, Equation Genitive : a mile’s distance – the distance is a mile, Genitive of destination: children’s books – books for children,Mixed Group: yesterday’s paper, Nick’s school, John’s word

. Different scholars stick to a different number of cases.

  1. There are 2 cases. The Common one and The Genitive;

  2. There are no cases at all, the form with `s is optional because the same relations may be expressed by the ‘of-phrase’: the doctor’s arrival – the arrival of the doctor;

  3. There are 3 cases: the Nominative, the Genitive, the Objective due to the existence of objective pronouns me, him, whom;

Соседние файлы в предмете [НЕСОРТИРОВАННОЕ]