CONTENT
Introduction …………………………………………………………………….....3
1 Theoretical aspects of nouns and their categories ………………..…………5
1.1 The notion of noun……………………………………………………………..5
1.2 Grammatical categories of nouns……………..………………………………..6 2 Practical aspects of nouns and their categories ……………………………...102.1 The using of grammatical categories of nouns insongs ……………………...102.2 The comparison of grammatical categories of nouns in English and Russian languages…………………………………………….……………………………12
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………..18
Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………...19
Appendix …………………………………………………………………………20
Introduction
Topicality
Language is a social phenomenon and every language has its own grammar. For many centuries such famous scholars as B. Illyish, M. Y. Blokh, O. Jesperson and many others had investigated the problem of parts of speech, that causes great controversies both in general linguistic theory and in the analysis of separate languages. And the main question that had interested them was noun as a part of speech.
Nouns are the most numerous class of words (42% of all words). Professor A.S.Ahmanova in her dictionary of linguistic terms gives the following definition of the noun or the substance is the part of speech characterized by the categorical meaning of thingness, by the lexico-grammatical category of gender, by the grammatical categories of number and case, by the syntactical functions of subject, object and predicate and by the developed of word formation models. The noun is a word expressing substance in the widest sense of the word. In the concept of substance we include not only names of living beings (e.g. boy, girl, bird) and lifeless things (e.g. table, chair, book), but also names of abstract notions, i.e. qualities, slates, actions (kindness, strength, sleep, fear, conversation, fight), abstracted from their bearers. In speech these types of nouns are treated in different ways, so one, who does not know ways of treatment, can make mistakes in his speech. No speaking is possible without the knowledge of using nouns and so, we have chosen the theme “Nouns and their grammatical categories”.
The aim: To describe grammatical categories that noun possesses.
To reach this aim we have set forward the followingobjectives:
- to describe main features of nouns;
- to analyze the grammatical categories of nouns.
- to compare the grammatical categories of English nouns with Russian
The object: Nouns
The subject: Grammatical categories of nouns
Hypothesis of course paper is postulated as follows: if we know the categories of nouns and their using, we will easily denote the the relations and connections of the objects existing in real life, indicate quantity and differentiate the sexes.
Basis of the course paper: TarSPI Resource centre, Internet resources.
Methods of investigation are studying and analysis of scientific literature, experiment, observation and description.
Theoretical value of the paper is that the information of the course paper may be used in some independent research works for those who wants to master modern English language.
Practical value of the course paper is using of different patterns of grammatical categories of nouns in practical classes of practical grammar, lexicology and etc.
The structure of our course paper consists of introduction, theoretical part,
practical part, conclusion, bibliography and appendix.
Introduction includes the topicality of our research, its object, subject, aim, objectives, basis of investigation, hypothesis, methods of investigation, theoretical and practical value of the work.
The theoretical part is based on the problems as definition of nouns, main features of English nouns, their grammatical categories.
The practical part is based on analysis of grammatical categories of nouns.
Conclusion summarizes the results of our investigation.
In bibliography the list of literature is given.
In appendix we present samples of the pictures.
Theoretical aspects of nouns and their categories
The notion of nouns
Word classes (parts of speech) were described by Sanskrit grammarians from at least the 5th century BC. In Yāska's Nirukta, the noun (nāma) is one of the four main categories of words defined.
The Ancient Greek equivalent was ónoma (ὄνομα), referred to by Plato in the Cratylus dialog, and later listed as one of the eight parts of speech in The Art of Grammar, attributed to Dionysius Thrax (2nd century BC). The term used in Latin grammar was nōmen. All of these terms for "noun" were also words meaning "name"[1]. The English word noun is derived from the Latin term, through the Anglo-Norman noun.
The word classes were defined partly by the grammatical forms that they take. In Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, for example, nouns are categorized by gender and inflected for case and number.
Many European languages use a cognate of the word substantive as the basic term for noun (for example, Spanish sustantivo, "noun"). Nouns in the dictionaries of such languages are demarked by the abbreviation s. or sb. instead of n., which may be used for proper nouns or neuter nouns instead. In English, some modern authors use the word substantive to refer to a class that includes both nouns (single words) and noun phrases (multiword units, also called noun equivalents). It can also be used as a counterpart to attributive when distinguishing between a noun being used as the head (main word) of a noun phrase and a noun being used as a noun adjunct. For example, the nounknee can be said to be used substantively in my knee hurts, but attributively in the patient needed knee replacement.Nouns have sometimes been defined in terms of the grammatical categories to which they are subject (classed by gender, inflected for case and number). Such definitions tend to be language-specific, since nouns do not have the same categories in all languages [2].
Nouns are frequently defined, particularly in informal contexts, in terms of their semantic properties (their meanings). Nouns are described as words
that refer to a person, place, thing, event, substance, quality, quantity, etc. However this type of definition has been criticized by contemporary linguists as being uninformative.
There have been offered several examples of English-language nouns which do not have any reference: drought, enjoyment, finesse, behalf (as found in on behalf of), dint (in dint of), and sake (for the sake of). Moreover, there may be a relationship similar to reference in the case of other parts of speech: the verbs to rain or to mother; many adjectives, like red; and there is little difference between the adverbgleefully and the noun-based phrase with glee [3].
Nouns fall under two classes: (A) proper nouns; (B) common nouns.
a) Proper nouns are individual, names given to separate persons or things. As regards their meaning proper nouns may be personal names (Mary, Peter,
Shakespeare), geographical names (Moscow, London, the Caucasus), the names of the months and of the days of the week (February, Monday), names of ships, hotels, clubs, etc.
A large number of nouns now proper were originally common nouns (Brown, Smith, Mason) [4].
Proper nouns may change their meaning and become common nouns:
«George went over to the table and took a sandwich and a glass of champagne. (Aldington)
b) Common nouns are names that can be applied to any individual of ad ass of persons or things (e.g. man, dog, book), collections of similar individuals or things regarded as a single unit (e. g. peasantry, family), materials (e. g. snow, iron, cotton) or abstract notions (e.g. kindness, development).
Thus there are different groups of common nouns: class nouns, collective nouns, nouns of material and abstract nouns.
1. Class nouns denote persons or things belonging to a class. They are countable and have two. numbers: singular and plural. They are generally used with an article.
«Well, sir», said Mrs. Parker, «I wasn't in the shop above a great deal.» (Mansfield)
2. Collective nouns denote a number or collection of similar individuals or things as a single unit. Collective nouns fall under the following groups:
(a) nouns used only in the singular and denoting-a number of things collected together and regarded as a single object: foliage, machinery.
It was not restful, that green foliage. (London)
(b) nouns which are singular in form though plural in meaning:police, poultry, cattle, people, gentry. They are usually called nouns of multitude. When the subject of the sentence is a noun of multitude the verb used as predicate is in the plural:
The weather was warm and the people were sitting at their doors. (Dickens)
(c) nouns that may be both singular and plural: family, crowd, fleet, nation. We can think of a number of crowds, fleets or different nations as well as of a single crowd, etc.
3. Nouns of material denote material: iron, gold, paper, tea, water. They are uncountable and are generally used without any article.
4. Abstract nouns denote some quality, state, action or idea: kindness, sadness, fight. They are usually uncountable, though some of them may be countable.
Therefore when the youngsters saw that mother looked neither frightened nor offended, they gathered new courage. (Dodge)
Grammatical categories of nouns
Grammatical category is a class of units (such as noun and verb) or features (such as number and case) that share a common set of grammatical properties.
Grammatical category is a linguistic category which has the effect of modifying the forms of some class of words in a language. The words of everyday language are divided up into several word classes, or parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs
and adjectives. It often happens that the words in a given class exhibit two or more forms used in somewhat different grammatical circumstances. In each such case, this variation in form is required by the presence in the language of one or more grammatical categories applying to that class of words.
English nouns are affected by only one grammatical category, that of number: we have singular dog but plural dogs, and so on for most (but not all) of the nouns in the language. These forms are not interchangeable, and each must be used always and only in specified grammatical circumstances. And here is a key point: we must always use a noun in either its singular form or its plural form, even when the choice seems irrelevant; there is no possibility of avoiding the choice, and there is no third form which is not marked one way or the other. This is typically the case with grammatical categories.
The grammatical category of number is the linguistic representation of the objective category of quantity. The number category is realized through the opposition of two form-classes: the plural form: the singular form. The category of number in English is restricted in its realization because of the dependent implicit grammatical meaning of countableness/uncountableness. The number category is realized only within subclass of countable nouns.The grammatical meaning of
number may not coincide with the notional quantity: thenoun in the singular does not necessarily denote one object while the plural form may be used to denote one object consisting of several parts [5]. The singular form may denote:
oneness (individual separate object – a cat);
generalization (the meaning of the whole class – The cat is a domestic animal);
indiscreteness (нерасчлененность or uncountableness - money, milk).
The plural form may denote:
the existence of several objects (cats);
the inner discreteness (внутренняярасчлененность, pluraliatantum, jeans).
To sum it up, all nouns may be subdivided into three groups:
The nouns in which the opposition of explicit discreteness/indiscreteness is expressed: cat::cats;
The nouns in which this opposition is not expressed explicitly but is revealed by syntactical and lexical correlation in the context [6]. There are two groups here:
Singulariatantum. It covers different groups of nouns: proper names, abstract nouns, material nouns, collective nouns;
Pluraliatantum. It covers the names of objects consisting of several parts (jeans), names of sciences (mathematics), names of diseases, games, etc.
The nouns with homogenous number forms. The number opposition here is not expressed formally but is revealed only lexically and syntactically in the context: e.g. Look! A sheep is eating grass. Look! The sheep are eating grass.
Case expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word-group or sentence (my sister’s coat). The category of case correlates with the objective category of possession. The case category in English is realized through the opposition: The Common Case: The Possessive Case (sister:: sister’s). However, in
modern linguistics the term “genitive case” is used instead of the “possessive case” because the meanings rendered by the “`s” sign are not only those of possession. The scope of meanings rendered by the Genitive Case is the following:
Possessive Genitive: Mary’s father – Mary has a father,
Subjective Genitive: The doctor’s arrival – The doctor has arrived,
Objective Genitive: The man’s release – The man was released,
Adverbial Genitive: Two hour’s work – X worked for two hours,
Equation Genitive: a mile’s distance – the distance is a mile,
Genitive of destination: children’s books – books for children,
Mixed Group: yesterday’s paper
Nick’s school cannot be reduced to one nucleus
John’s word
To avoid confusion with the plural, the marker of the genitive case is represented in written form with an apostrophe. This fact makes possible disengagement of –`s form from the noun to which it properly belongs. E.g.: The man I saw yesterday’s son, where -`s is appended to the whole group (the so-called group genitive). It may even follow a word which normally does not possess such a formant, as in
somebody else’s book [7].
There is no universal point of view as to the case system in English. Different scholars stick to a different number of cases.
1. There are two cases. The Common one and The Genitive;
2. 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;
There are three cases: the Nominative, the Genitive, the Objective due to the existence of objective pronouns me, him, whom;
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 6 cases:
1. Agentive Case (A) John opened the door;
2. Instrumental case (I) The key opened the door; John used the key to open the door;
3. 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);
4. Factitive Case (F) The key was damaged (the result of the action or state identified by the verb);
5. Locative Case (L) Chicago is windy;
6. Objective case (O) John stole the book.
Gender plays a relatively minor part in the grammar of English by comparison
with its role in many other languages. There is no gender concord, and the reference of the pronouns he, she, it is very largely determined by what is sometimes referred to as ‘natural’ gender for English, it depends upon the classification of persons and objects as male, female or inanimate. Thus, the recognition of gender as a grammatical category is logically independent of any particular semantic association [8].
According to some language analysts (B.Ilyish, F.Palmer, and E.Morokhovskaya), nouns have no category of gender in Modern English. Prof.Ilyish states that not a single word in Modern English shows any peculiarities in its morphology due to its denoting male or female being. Thus, the words husband and wife do not show any difference in their forms due to peculiarities of their lexical meaning. The difference between such nouns as actor and actress is a purely lexical one [9].
In other words, the category of gender should not be confused with the category of sex, because sex is an objective biological category. It correlates with gender only when sex differences of living beings are manifested in the language grammatically (e.g. tiger – tigress). Still, other scholars (M.Blokh, John Lyons) admit the existence of the category of gender. Prof. Blokh states that the existence of the category of gender in Modern English can be proved by the correlation of nouns with personal pronouns of the third person (he, she, it) [10]. Accordingly, there are three genders in English: the neuter (non-person) gender, the masculine
gender, the feminine gender.
So, nouns is very important because its structure is used in every day conversation. The more you practice the subject, the closer you get to mastering the English language. But first we need to know what the role of nouns is in the structure of the grammar in English and also know their grammatical categories.