- •The reflexive voice. Non-traditional voices.
- •Clause-sentence-utterance-logical proposition
- •Informative type of sentence
- •Communicative & structural types of sentences
- •The article.
- •Category of modality in the sentence
- •Modal words
- •Statives
- •The category of mood. Indicative. Imperative.
- •Terminative/non-terminative, transitive/intransitive verbs Grammatical categories of the verb
- •The verb – meaning, form, function. Principles of classification.
- •The Theory of parts of speech in prenormative &classical gr-s.
- •The theory of parts of speech in American Descriptive Grammar.
- •The Theory of Progress, the Functional Theory.
- •Origin of the structure of Modern e-sh: Phonetic Approach, the Theory of Substratum.
- •Phonetic approach
- •The Theory of Substratum
- •Basic features of English syntax
- •Analytical features ofword-building
- •Prenormative eg
- •Prescriptive eg
- •Classical scientific grammar of e-sh
- •American descriptive grammar of eng
- •Transformational grammar
- •Noun. Number.
- •Noun. Case.
- •Scientific Principles for the Classification of Parts of Speech in Native Grammars of English. The Notion of Grammatical Category.
- •The adjective
- •Tense & Aspect of the verb
- •Numeral
- •Notional and formal words
- •Predicativity of the s-ce.
- •The verb: person and number. Other morphological categories
- •Syntax of classical scientific grammar
- •Quotation groups
- •Grammatical trends in word-changing noun adj PrN
- •Trends in Modern English word-changing verb
- •Generative semantix/syntax
- •The category of Voice
- •The Reflective Voice (rv)
- •Pronoun
- •Phrases (Ps)
- •Sentence definitions
- •Principles of clause-classification
- •Complex sent. As a syntactic unity
- •The subjunctive mood
Noun. Number.
English nouns that are inflected for number have singular and plural forms. S. denotes one, plural denotes more than one. Most count nouns are variable and can occur with either singular or plural number. The plural form is marked by the inflexion - (e) s.
Regular plurals:
1. N. ending in vowels and voiced consonants have the plural ending pronounced as [z]: bee - bees, dog - dogs.
2. N. ending in voiceless consonants have a voiceless ending: book - books.
3. N. ending in -s, -sh, -ss, -ch, -x, -z have the ending [iz]: actress -actresses, bush - bushes, watch - watches, box - boxes.
4. N. ending in -o have the ending [z]: hero -heroes, potato – potatoes. The regular plural inflexion of nouns in -o has two spellings; -os occurs in the following cases: a) after a vowel — bamboos, embryos, folios, kangaroos, radios, studios, zoos; b) in proper names - Romeos, Eskimos, Filipinos; c) in abbreviations, kilos, photos; In other cases the spelling is -oes: tomatoes, dominoes, heroes, potatoes.
5. The letter -y after a consonant usually changes into -i: sky – skies But the letter -y remains unchanged -ys: a) after vowels: days. b) in proper names: the two Germanys.
6. Thirteen nouns ending-in -f (e) form their plural changing -f (e) into -v (e): the ending in this case is pronounced (z]:calf –calves, life - lives, thief - thieves, elf - elves, loaf-loaves, wife – wives, half – halves, self - selves, wolf - wolves, knife – knives, sheaf - sheaves (снопы), leaf –leaves, shelf – shelves. Other nouns ending in -f(e) have the plural inflexion -s in the regular way: proof -proofs, chief- chiefs, safe - safes, cliff- cliffs.
7. The plural of nouns ending in “th” – the plural ending in this case is – s: month – months, heart – hearts.
Irregular plurals. 1. Seven nouns distinguish plural from singular by vowel change: man-men, woman-women, louse-lice, tooth-teeth, foot-feet, goose-geese, mouse-mice.
2. two nouns have –en to mark the plural: ox-oxen, child-children.
3. with some nouns the plural is identical with the singular form: a) sheep-sheep, swine-swine, deer-deer. There are some animal names that have 2 plurals: fish-fish(es), carp-carp(s), salmon-salmon(s). b) identical singular and plural forms are also typical of nationality nouns in –ese, -ss: Chinese, Swiss, Japanese. c) names, indicating number: pair, couple, dozen, score, stone, head.
Noun. Case.
The case is a disputable category of the noun as not all nouns have the-two case system. It’s traditionally stated that the noun has 2 cases – the common and the genitive. But the number of nouns which can be used in both cases is rather limited. The genitive case can be found with animate nouns (a boy’s name), nouns denoting time and measure (a day’s rest, mile’s distance).
R. Close made a conclusion that the actual number of nouns used in genitive case in modern E. is much wider. Here belong nouns denoting groups of people, places of their living, various social institutions (Africa’s future, country’s needs, Moscow’s traffic, meeting decision, the Times’ reporter).
Charles Barber mentions the use of the genitive case with a lot of abstract nouns where normally the combination with the preposition ‘of’ should be used (biography’s charm, evil’s power, games’ laws, resorts’ weather).
In the modern E. the so-called group genitive is becoming popular when two or more words are united by the apostrophe (John and Nick’s room, the-girl-I-go-with’s parents). The nouns in modern E. are building their case and number categories synthetically; and the frequency of the genitive case is rising at the expense of inanimate nouns.