Attachments_setltd@mail.ru_2012-06-24_15-33-11 английский язык / 12 Noun definition gender number
.docx12 Noun. The general description
Noun as a part of speech has the categorial meaning of substance. Substantivity is grammatical meaning which allows both names of things and not names of things (abstract notions, activities, properties etc) to function syntactically as names of things. Not all the nouns, derived from other parts of speech, have the morphological categories of noun. Not all the nouns meet every criterion (see the previous lecture), but they belong to the field structure of noun.
The semantic properties of the noun determine its categorial syntactic properties: the primary substantive functions of the noun are those of the subject and the object. Its other functions are predicative (she is a singer), attributive (the stone wall), which can be treated as turning of the noun into an adjective, which is proved by the fact, that these words lose the category of number) and adverbial (in the room).
The syntactic properties of the noun are also revealed in its special types of combinability. In particular, the noun is characterized by the prepositional combinability with another noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb.
As a part of speech the noun has a set of formal features: specific word-building suffixes, which serves as the only criterion for their belonging to this part of speech. Two groups of nouns have mostly suffixal structure: persons and abstracts: er, ist, ess are the person suffixes; ness, ion, ation, ition, ity, ism, ance, ment are abstract (singer, naturalist, actress, darkness, attention, movement). The vast majority of nouns are one-syllable words, in which the root coincides with the stem and the word.
The noun discriminates 4 grammatical categories: the cat. of gender, number, case and article determination, out of which only number is undoubtful.
The formal features taken together are relevant for the division of nouns into several subclasses, grouped into four oppositional pairs.
Proper-common – “type of nomination” , animate-inanimate – “type of existence”, human-non-human – “personal quality”, countable-uncountable – “quantitative structure”. Also there is an opposition of concrete and abstract nouns. (friend-friendship)
Noun. The category of number
Modern English, as most other languages, distinguishes between two numbers, singular and plural (dual number). The singular number shows that one object is meant, and the plural shows that more than one object is meant. Thus, the opposition is “one – more than one”. The strong member of this opposition is the plural. Its productive formal mark is the suffix –(e)s [-z, -s, -iz]. The singular is the weak, unmarked form, characterized by the absence of the suffix. The other, non-productive ways of expressing the number opposition are vowel interchange in several relict forms (man-men), the archaic suffix –en supported by phonemic interchange (brother-brethren), borrowings from Latin and Greek (formula-formulae, phenomenon-phenomena, alumnus-alumni). There are homonymous plural forms (sheep).
With the reference to the category of number all the nouns are divided into countable and uncountable. Uncountable nouns can be of two types – singularia tantum (abstract notions – peace, courage; the names of branches of professional activity – chemistry, physics, politics /Latin plural physica, politica is used with singular verb/; the names of mass materials – water, hair; collective inanimate objects – furniture, equipment, news)
and pluralia tantum (objects consisting of two parts – scissors, jeans; expressing the idea of indefinite plurality, also a sort of collective inanimate objects – earnings, clothes, outskirts, contents, supplies – used with plural verb). Nouns denoting groups of people and animals – family, board, crew, cattle, poultry – can denote a group as a whole, treated as singular, called ‘collective nouns’(The Board knows about it.); or as
consisting of a number of persons or animals, termed as ‘nouns of multitude’ (Many cattle are grazing in the field.)
The necessity of expressing definite numbers of uncountable objects brought about suppletive combinations with words ‘pair’, ‘case’, ‘piece’.
The use of singularia tantum in the plural form can be lexicalized (sorts of steel, woods, glasses), or it is a case of oppositional reduction.
Oppositional reduction or oppositional substitution, is the usage of one member of an opposition in the position of the counter-member. From the functional point of view there exist two types of opp.reduction: neutralization of the categorial opposition and its transposition.
In case of neutralization one member of the opposition becomes fully identified with its counterpart. As the position of neutralization is usually filled in by the weak member of the opposition due to its more general semantics, this kind of oppositional reduction is stylistically colourless : “Man is sinful”. It is an example of neutralization of the opposition of the category of number because in the sentence the noun “man” used in the singular (the weak member of the opposition) fulfills the function of the plural counterpart (the strong member of the opposition), for it denotes the class as a whole. Neutralization takes place when countable nouns begin to function as singularia tantum nouns, denoting in such cases either abstract ideas or some mass material ‘On my birthday we always have goose’; or when countable nouns are used in the function of the absolute plural ‘The Board are not unanimous on this issue’.
Transposition takes place when one member of the opposition placed in the contextual conditions uncommon for it begins to simultaneously fulfill two functions – its own and the function of its counterpart. As a result, transposition is always accompanied by different stylistic effects: the use of uncountable nouns in the plural form ‘the sands of the desert, the snows of Kilimanjaro, the fruits of the toil’. The plural form is outstretched, transponized into the group of nouns which usually have no reference to singularity-plurality.
The category of gender.
The problem of gender in English is disputable. Linguistic scholars as a rule deny the existence of gender in English as a grammatical category and stress its purely semantic character. The actual gender distinctions of nouns are not denied by anyone, what is disputable is the character of the gender classification: whether it is purely semantic or semantico-grammatical.
In fact, the category of gender in English is expressed with the help of the correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns of the 3rd person. Here English gender distinctions display their grammatical nature.
The category of gender is based on two hierarchically based oppositions. The first opposition functions on the whole set of nouns, dividing them into human and non-human nouns. The other opposition functions in the subset of person nouns only, dividing them into masculine nouns and feminine nouns. As the result of the double oppositional correlation, a specific system of three genders arises: neuter, masculine and feminine. The strong member of the upper opposition is the human subclass of nouns, the week member of the opposition comprises both inanimate and animate non-person nouns.
In English there are many person nouns capable of expressing both feminine and masculine genders by way of the pronominal correlation. These nouns comprise a group of the so-called “common gender nouns: person, friend, еtc.
In the plural all the gender distinctions are neutralized but they are rendered through the correlation with the singular. The category of gender can undergo the process of oppositional reduction. It can be neutralized (with the group of “common gender” nouns) and transponized (the process of personification). “A family is spouses and siblings, who live in one household”, “ The old man was soon asleep and dreamed of the ocean and his golden beaches.”