The first classification of nouns
| Nouns | ||||||
| Types | Proper | Common | Collective | |||
| Meanings | Names and nicknames of definite people, places, things | Names of any object, thing, phenomenon | Name the sum total, the whole complex of things | |||
| Peculiarities | Do not have a generalized conceptual content, meaning | Have a generalized conceptual content, meaning | Present the whole complex as a certain unite | |||
| Varieties | _ | Concrete | Abstract | Material | Have the opposition of Singular and Plural Number | Do not have the opposition |
| Examples | John (the name of a man), Mr. Fix-it (the nickname of a man), Sevastopol (the name of a town), Crimea (the name of a geographical place, of a peninsular) etc. | table, man, girl, apple, book, etc. | idea, friendship, faith, serendipity, joy, etc | water, oil, sugar, gold, acid, petrol, etc. | family – families, class – classes, people – peoples = folk – folks, society – societies, nation –nations, etc. | people (as a sum total of human beings), humanity, mankind, nature (as the sum total of animals, plants, things in the universe), etc. |
The second classification of the Noun is based on the principle of opposition – individual ‘personal’ names and names for other things. It is schematically presented in the table 3.2.
Table 3.2
The second classification of nouns
| Nouns | |||||
| Types | Common | Proper | |||
| Meanings | Name any object, thing, phenomenon and have a generalized conceptual content, meaning | Name and nickname definite people, places, things and do not have a generalized conceptual content, meaning | |||
| Opposition | Countable (can be counted) | Uncountable (cannot be counted) | _ | ||
| Varieties | Concrete | Abstract | Concrete | Abstract | |
| Examples | chair (-s), box (-es), vegetable (-s), woman (women), wife (wives), knife (knives), etc. | difficulty (-ies), life (lives), idea (-s), doubt (doubts), spirit (-s), soul (-s), belief (believes) etc. | water, money, bread, meat, salt, butter, vinegar, trousers, scissors, hair, etc. | knowledge, love, hatred, honesty, wealth, wisdom, courage, faith, respect, tolerance, etc. | Dnepr (the name of a river), Barbara (the first name of a woman), Everest (the name of a mountain), London (the name of a city), Africa (the name of a continent), Shakespeare (the second name of a man), the Victory (the name of a ship), etc. |
Grammatical categories of the Noun.
Grammatical categories of the Noun are poor.
*There is the Category of the Number.
*The Category of the Case has been still under certain doubts.
*The Category of the Gender is considered to have completely disappeared by the end of the Middle Ages, though there is still some arguments as for considering Gender as a grammatical category of the English Noun.
The problem of the Gender of the English Noun.
The gender of an object, thing or phenomenon is expressed with lexical, but not grammatical, means (boy – girl, man – woman, bull – caw; he-goat – she-goat; star – it; window – it, ship – it/she, etc.). Grammatically there is almost no sign to indicate the gender of a noun (the suffix -ess can be considered as an exception: steward – stewardess, actor – actress, etc.).
Some scientists, however, (for example, an American linguist Strand, a Russian linguist Bloch) consider Gender as a category of the English Noun as all the nouns can be substituted by the appropriate pronouns. Though it would not be really correct for the propriety of the Pronoun (to substitute the noun in accordance to the lexical gender the latter expresses) is shifted to the Noun. It can breed a certain confusion in the understanding of the problem of English Grammar.
The category of the Number.
1. The category of the Number is based on the opposition of singularity and plurality.
For example:
parent – parents, tree –trees, man –men, life – lives, etc.
Singular form of the Noun is multiciphered (многозначное; can stay singular or change into plural) and Plural – simple (однозначное; cannot change for has already been changed).
The opposition of singularity and plurality can, for example:
1) express differences in size (ex., wood (like material to be used to make a fire; logs) and woods (like an area of trees, smaller than a forest));
2) distinguish a class and a subclass (ex., fish (as a creature that lives in water) and fishes (refers to different kinds of fish)).
2. The category of the Number as for the formal indices is presented in two general models – open and closed.
1). As for the open model or productive (it goes on working) it is displayed by the formal index – the suffix -s/-es (in the Plural form of the Noun) or by its absence (in the Singular one).
For example:
Star – stars, floor –floors, knife – knives, etc.
*To the allomorphemes of the suffix -s/-es the following three are included:
1) [s]; after voiceless (unvoiced, surd, breathed) consonants (ex., cats);
2) [z] after vowels (ex., indices) and voiced consonants (ex., dogs);
3) [iz] sibilant (ex., kisses) and hushing sounds (ex., bushes).
2). As for the closed model (it is a certain historical heritage and does not develop) it is grammatically displayed only morphologically or in the sequence with a verb:
1) morphologically: Ox – oxen, child – children, woman –women, man – men, phenomenon – phenomena, antenna – antennae, data – datum, etc.
2) in the sequence with a verb: the noun sheep does not change its grammatical form at all: The sheep is here (Singular Number). The sheep are here (Plural Number).
3). There are also nouns which are unchangeable and have only singular or only plural form:
a) only singular: advice, information, knowledge, furniture, etc.;
b) only plural: trousers, pants, pyjamas, spectacles, etc.
The category of Case.
The Case
refers to the relations of an object/thing/phenomenon (which is denoted by a noun) to other objects, actions and signs, on the one hand, and
presents the means of material or linguistic expression of these relations, on the other.
The are two opposite points of scientific view as for the existence of the category of Case in English:
1) there is the category of Case in English (there are a few approaches to the problem of the English Case);
2) there is not the category of Case in English (a new point of linguistic view).
1. Five general approaches to the problem of the English Case are based on the principle of the number of the cases.
1). There are two cases. The principle of Form.
Henry Sweet
(19th century; an English linguist; Classical Grammar; principles of morphological form and syntactic function)
On the ground of the principle of Form he distinguished two grammatical forms of the English Case:
a) the Common Case (shows the relations of an object in the linguistic form of a noun with actions (verbs) and signs (adjectives)).
The notion of the Common Case was introduced to the English Grammar by H.Sweet;
b) the Possessive Case (shows the object’s possession of another object, thing, phenomenon).
In the second half of the 18th c. Robert Laud (an English linguist) attracted the attention of the scientists to a diachronical change in the structure of the language. The change concerned with the old English Genitive Case (родительный падеж) which lost its original grammatical meaning and kept only the meaning of possession.
For example:
Mother (the Common Case) did not know where the son’s (the Possessive Case) hat (the Common Case) was left.
2). There are five cases. The principle of Lexical Meaning.
In the field of Semantic Grammar five cases were distinguished on the principle of Lexical Meaning. They were said to be Nominative (именительный), Genitive (родительный), Dative (дательный), Accusative (винительный)and Vocative (звательный) cases.
The approach was criticized by
Jence Otto Harry Jespersen
(1860-1943; a Danish linguist; Philosophy of Grammar; principles of morphological form and syntactic function)
The critics was based on the peculiarity of the approach as it was grounded on Latin which left some traits in English structure but was different: the Latin Noun changed its Grammatical Form whereas the English Noun could change it only in Number and when a possession was emphasized. Latin cases were Nominativus, Genitivus, Dativus, Accusativus, Vocativus and Ablativus (отделительный).
For example:
Table 3.3