Билет 7. The category of substantive number
All English nouns have form which corresponds to the structural type of the singular or plural. But not all of them have the grammatical category of number. Only count nouns are inflected for it. Only these nouns indicate whether the noun names one or more than one referent , that is ,are used in both numbers.
Grammatical numbers of English nouns are the singular and the plural. The basic form is the singular.The plural of almost all the counts is built by adding the inflexion -/e/s to the basic form /singular form/. In speech this inflexion is related in 3 variants:
/s/ , /z/ , /iz/ depending upon the character of the preceding sound: /s/ occurs after voiceless consonants , /z/ after voiced consonants and vowels , /iz/ after sibilants, /s/ cup-cups
Ех: cat –cats,/z/ bag-bags,boy-boys,/iz/ bus-buses,rose-roses,bush-bushes,match-matches
In nouns with the final –y preceded by a consonant –y changes into –i. The plural ending is –es
Study-studies
A small number of nouns have irregular plurals. They are: Man-men,Woman-woman,Goose-geese,Foot-feet,Tooth-teeth,Mouse-mice,Louse-lice,Child-children,Ox-oxen
In a number of nouns having a sound /f/ in the singular/spelled –f of –fe/ this sound changes into/v/ in the plural form and the ending –es is added.
Knife-knives,Leaf-leaves,Life-lives,Loaf-loaves,Shelf-shelves,Wife-wives,Wolf-wolves.
There is no change of the sound in the plural of the nouns roof,proof,safe. Both variants are found in the nouns handkerchieves /-fs/ ,hoof-hooves/hoofs/ , scarf-scarfs /ves/
The formation of the plural of nouns ending in / -o/.The plural of these nouns is built up by adding to the singular form the inflexion
/-es/ hero-heroes Negro-Negroes,tomato-tomatoes,potato-potatoes./-s/ in: nouns ending in 2 vowels /radio-radios,zoo-zoos/,in shortenings /photo-photos,kilo-kilos/,in musical terms of Italian origin /solo-solos,piano-pianos/.
Билет 8 . the category of case.Grammatical category of case – GC which marks the semantic role of the noun in the sentence & finds a grammatical expression in the language.
Case is the immanent morphological category of the noun, showing the relations of the object to other objects and phenomena. In modern Eng is limited to the system of 2 cases: common & possessive . The morphological expression of case in modern Eng is limited to the system of 2 cases. The Cat of case of the Eng N is constituted by the binary privative opposition of the common & possessive cases. The formal marker of the PC ( Positional Cases )is the morpheme -'s [z, s, iz].
The apostrophy serves to distinguish in writing the singular noun in the possessive case from the plural noun in the common case. The possessive of the most of plural nouns remains phonetically unexpressed: the few exceptions concern only some of the irregular plurals: e.g. the actresses' dresses, the children's room. The Theory of Positional Cases
1)In accord with the theory of positional cases the unchangable forms of the noun may express different cases due to the functional positions occupied by the noun in the sentence. Thus, the English noun, on the analogy of classical Latin grammar, would distinguish, besides the inflexional posessive case, also the non-inflexional, i.e. purely positional cases: nominative, vocative, dative and accusative.
The case form is the morphological form of the noun, but the positional case theory substitutes the functional characteristics of the part of the sentence for the morphological features of the part of speech.
2) The Theory of Prepositional Cases
It is also connected with the old school grammar teaching. According to it, combinations of nouns with prepositions on some object and attributive word-groups should be understood as morphological case forms. Here belong the dative case (to + noun, for + noun) and the posessive case (of + noun).
3) The Limited Case Theory
It is based on the opposition of the possessive or posessive form as the strong member and the common, or “non-posessive” from as the weak member.
It is shown in full with animate nouns, and is restricted with inanimate nouns.
4) Postpositional Theory (No-Case Theory)
Thus view insists that the English noun has completely lost the category of case in the course of its historical development. The view is advanced by G.N. Vorontsova.
Билет 9 .the category of gender.Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words .Polarity restricted to internal agreement makes sense because the noun is close enough to disambiguate . Or external agreement is more likely to be semantically based as a consequence of its (syntactic) distance.It is gender that takes over number differentiation, not the other way around. Explanation is that gender is a lexical characterisitc, and number a syntactic one. For many words only two of the three pair, for some only one occurs. The exponent "plural' of gender is different from the exponent "multiple reference" of number. Some (p) nouns are unit reference. Nouns may switch gender between the exponents of number, which also shows that the two categories are independent. The choice of number formation for a particular noun is ultimately lexical, but there are phonological and morphological considerations such as gender of the unit refernce form.
БИлет 10. the article.An article (abbreviated art) is a word (or prefix or suffix) that is with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. Articles specify the grammatical definiteness of the noun, in some languages extending to volume or numerical scope. The articles in the English language are the and a/an, and (in some contexts) some. 'An' and 'a' are modern forms of the Old English 'an', which in Anglian dialects was the number 'one' (compare 'on', in Saxon dialects) and survived into Modern Scots as the number 'ane'. Both 'on' (respelled 'one' by the Normans) and 'an' survived into Modern English, with 'one' used as the number and 'an' ('a', before nouns that begin with a consonant sound) as an indefinite article.
Traditionally in English, an article is usually considered to be a type of adjective. In some languages, articles are a special part of speech, which cannot easily be combined with other parts of speech. It is also possible for articles to be part of another part of speech category such as a determiner, an English part of speech category that combines articles and demonstratives (such as 'this' and 'that').
In languages that employ articles, every common noun, with some exceptions, is expressed with a certain definiteness (e.g., definite or indefinite), just as many languages express every noun with a certaingrammatical number (e.g., singular or plural). Every noun must be accompanied by the article, if any, corresponding to its definiteness, and the lack of an article (considered a zero article) itself specifies a certain definiteness. This is in contrast to other adjectives and determiners, which are typically optional. This obligatory nature of articles makes them among the most common words in many languages—in English, for example, the most frequent word is the
Билет 11. the adjective.Adjective is a part of speech characterized by the following typical features:
1.The lexico-grammatical meaning of “attributes (of substantives)”. By attributes we mean different properties of substantives, such as their size, colour, position in space, material, psychic state of persons, etc.
2.The morphological category of the degrees of comparison.
3.The characteristic combinability with nouns (a beautiful girl), link verbs (…is clever), adverbs, mostly those of degree (a very clever boy), the so-called “prop word” one (the grey one).
4.The stem-building affixes –ful, -less, -ish, -ous, -ive, -ic, un-, pre-, in-, etc.
5.Its functions of an attribute and a predicative complement.
With regard to the category of the degrees of comparison adjectives fall under 2 lexico-grammatical subclasses: comparables and non-comparables. The nucleus of the latter is composed of derived adjectives like wooden, Crimean, mathematical, etc. а Theses adjectives are called relative as distinct from all other adjectives called qualitative.
Билет 12. degrees of comparison of adjectives. There are three forms of comparison: