Types of Oppositional Reduction

There are three types of oppositional reduction in the sphere of number category (Fig. 35).

The first type of reduction consists in the use of the absolute plural with countable nouns in the singular form. It concerns collective nouns which are changed into “nouns of multitude”.

The second type of the oppositional reduction consists in the use of the absolute plural with uncountable nouns in the plural form. It concerns cases of stylistic marking of nouns.

The third type of oppositional reduction concerns common countable nouns used in repetition groups. This variety of the absolute plural may be called “repetition plural”.

Fig. 35

Category of Case

Case is a grammatical category which shows relation of the noun with other words in a sentence. It expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word-group or sentence. The category of case correlates with the objective category of possession. It is expressed by the form of the noun. The case category in English is realized through the opposition: the Common Case and the Possessive or Genitive Case.

There is no universal point of view as to the case system in English. Different scholars stick to a different number of cases (Table 4).

Table 4

Case Theories

theory	authors	num- ber of cases	names of cases
Case grammar	Ch. Fillmore		The Agentive Case, The Instrumental case, The Dative Case, The Factitive Case, The Locative Case, The Objective case
The theory of positional cases	J.C. Nesfield, M. Bryant M. Deutschbein		The Genitive, The Nominative, The Vocative, The Dative, The Accusative
The substitutional theory			The Nominative, The Objective case, The Genitive
The limited case theory	H. Sweet, O. Jespersen		The Genitive, The Common
The theory of prepositional cases	G. Curme		The Genitive (to + N, for + N) The Dative (of + N)
The postpositional theory	G.N. Vorontsova		__

Ch. Fillmore introduced syntactic-semantic classification of cases. They show relations in the so-called deep structure of the sentence. According to him, verbs may stand to different relations to nouns. There are six cases:

Agentive Case (A) John opened the door; Instrumental Case (I) The key opened the door; John used the key to open the door; Dative Case (D) John believed that he would win (the case of the animate being affected by the state of action identified by the verb); Factitive Case (F) The key was damaged ( the result of the action or state identified by the verb); Locative Case (L) Chicago is windy; Objective case (O) John stole the book.

According to the “theory of positional cases” the unchangeable forms of the noun are differentiated as different cases by virtue of the functional positions occupied by the noun in the sentence. Thus, the English noun distinguishes the inflectional genitive case and four non-inflectional, purely positional, cases:

Nominative Case John opened the door; Vocative Case John, open the door; Dative Case GiveJohn this book; Accusative Case I went with John there, Genitive Case This is John’s book.

According to the “substitutional case theory” there are three cases:

Nominative Case John opened the door; Genitive Case This is John’s book; Objective Case (due to the existence of objective pronouns me, him, whom) GiveJohn this book.

The “theory of prepositional cases” regards nounal combinations with the prepositions in certain object and attributive collocations as morphological case forms:

Dative Case Givethis book to John; Genitive Case She is a friendof my mother.

The “limited case theory” recognizes the existence in English of a limited case system:

Genitive Case This is John’s book; Common Case GiveJohn this book.

The limited case theory differentiates the two case forms: the possessive or genitive form as the strong member of the categorial opposition and the common, or “non-genitive” form as the weak member of the categorial opposition. This theory is at present most broadly accepted among linguists both in this country and abroad.

Another view of the problem of the English noun cases has been put forward which sharply counters the theories observed. The “postpositional theory” claims that the English noun in the course of its historical development has completely lost the morphological category of case. Thus, this theory states that there are no cases at all. The form ’s is optional because the same relations may be expressed by the ‘of-phrase’: the doctor’s arrival – the arrival of the doctor. So the lingual unit that is named the “genitive case” is a combination of a noun with a postposition.

In modern linguistics the term “genitive case” is often used instead of the “possessive case” because the meanings rendered by the “’s ” sign are not only those of possession (Fig. 36).

Fig. 36

Category of Gender

Gender plays a relatively minor part in English grammar. This category does not find regular morphological expression. Linguistic scholars as a rule deny the existence of gender in English as a grammatical category and stress its purely semantic character.

According to some language analysts (B. Ilyish, F. Palmer, and E. Morokhovskaya), nouns have no category of gender in Modern English.

Still, other scholars (M. Blokh, J. Lyons) admit the existence of the category of gender. Prof. Blokh states that the category of gender in English is expressed with the help of the obligatory correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns of the third person. The recognition of gender as a grammatical category is logically independent of any particular semantic association.

The category of gender is based on two oppositions: the upper opposition is general, it functions in the whole set of nouns and divides them into person and non- person nouns. The lower opposition is partial. It functions in the subset of person nouns only and divides them into masculine and feminine nouns. As a result of the double oppositional correlation, in Modern English a specific system of three genders arises: the neuter, the masculine, and the feminine genders. Besides, 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 (Fig. 37).

Fig. 37

There are several ways of expressing gender distinctions in Modern English (Fig. 38):

Ø The distinction of male, female and neuter may correspond to the lexical meaning of the noun.

Ø English nouns can show the sex of their referents through suffixal derivation.

Ø English nouns can show the sex of their referents by means of being combined with certain notional words used as sex indicators.

Fig. 38

There are also some traditional associations of certain nouns with gender. These are apparent in the use of personal or possessive pronouns:

Ø Moon and earth are referred to asfeminine, sun asmasculine.

Ø The names of vessels (ship, boat, steamer, ice-breaker, cruiser, etc.) are referred to asfeminine.

Ø The names of vehicles (car, carriage, coach) may also be referred to asfeminine, especially by their owners, to express their affectionate attitude to these objects.

Ø The names of countries, if the country is not considered as a mere geographical territory, are referred to asfeminine.