tula_tsu_099

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them from both nouns and adjectives. From this angle the meaning of pronouns as a part of speech can be stated as follows: pronouns point to the things and properties without naming them.

Form. As far as form goes pronouns fall into different types. Some of them have the category of number (singular and plural), e. g. this, while others have no such category, e. g. somebody. Again, some pronouns have the category of case (he

— him, somebody — somebody's), while others have none (something).

Function. (a) Some pronouns combine with verbs (he speaks, find him), while others can also combine with a following noun (this room). (b) In the sentence, some pronouns may be the subject (he, what) or the object, while others are the attribute (my). Pronouns can be predicatives.

4. Numeral

The treatment of numerals presents some difficulties, too. The so-called cardinal numerals (one, two) are somewhat different from the so-called ordinal numerals (first, second).

Meaning. Numerals denote either number or place in a series. Form. Numerals are invariable.

Function. (a) As far as phrases go, both cardinal and ordinal numerals combine with a following noun (three rooms, third room); occasionally a numeral follows a noun (soldiers three, George the Third). (b) In a sentence, a numeral most usually is an attribute (three rooms, the third room), but it can also be subject, predicative, and object: Three of them came in time; "We Are Seven" (the title of a poem by Wordsworth); I found only four.

5. The verb

Meaning. The verb as a part of speech expresses a process.

Form. The verb is characterized by an elaborate system of morphological categories, some of which are, however, controversial. These are: tense, aspect, mood, voice, person, and number.

Function. (a) Verbs are connected with a preceding noun (children play) and with a following noun (play games). They are also connected with adverbs (write

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quickly). Occasionally a verb may combine with an adjective (married young). (b) In a sentence a verb (in its finite forms) is always the predicate or part of it (link verb). The functions of the verbals (infinitive, participle, and gerund) must be dealt with separately.

7. The adverb

The meaning of the adverb as a part of speech is hard to define. Indeed, some adverbs indicate time or place of an action (yesterday, here), while others indicate its property (quickly) and others again the degree of a property (very). As, however, we should look for one central meaning characterising the part of speech as a whole, it seems best to formulate the meaning of the adverb as "property of an action or of a property".

Form. Adverbs are invariable. Some of them, however, have degrees of comparison (fast, faster, fastest).

Function. (a) An adverb combines with a verb (run quickly), with an adjective (very long), occasionally with a noun (the then president) and with a phrase (so out of things). (b) An adverb can sometimes follow a preposition (from there). (c) In a sentence an adverb is almost always an adverbial modifier, or part of it (from there), but it may occasionally be an attribute.

8. Prepositions

Meaning. The meaning of prepositions is obviously that of relations between things and phenomena.

Form. Prepositions are invariable.

Function. (a) Prepositions enter into phrases in which they are preceded by a noun, adjective, numeral, stative, verb or adverb, and followed by a noun, adjective, numeral or pronoun. (b) In a sentence a preposition never is a separate part of it. It goes together with the following word to form an object, adverbial modifier, predicative or attribute, and in extremely rare cases a subject (There were about a hundred people in the hall).

9. Conjunctions

Meaning. Conjunctions express connections between things and phenomena.

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Form. Conjunctions are invariable.

Function. (a) They connect any two words, phrases or clauses. (b) In a sentence, conjunctions are never a special part of it. They either connect homogeneous parts of a sentence or homogeneous clauses (the so-called coordinating conjunctions), or they join a subordinate clause to its head clause (the so-called subordinating conjunctions).

10. Particles

Meaning. The meaning of particles is very hard to define. We might say, approximately, that they denote subjective shades of meaning introduced by the speaker or writer and serving to emphasise or limit some point in what he says.

Form. Particles are invariable.

Function. (a) Particles may combine with practically every part of speech, more usually preceding it (only three), but occasionally following it (for advanced students only). (b) Particles never are a separate part of a sentence. They enter the part of the sentence formed by the word (or phrase) to which they refer. (It might also be argued that particles do not belong to any part of a sentence.)

11. Interjections

Meaning. Interjections express feelings (ah, alas). They are not names of feelings but the immediate expression of them. Some interjections represent noises, etc., with a strong emotional colouring (bang!).

Form. Interjections are invariable.

Function. (a) Interjections usually do not enter into phrases. Only in a few cases do they combine with a preposition and noun or pronoun, e.g. alas for him!

(b) In a sentence an interjection forms a kind of parenthesis. An interjection may also be a sentence in itself, e. g. Alas! as an answer to a question.

Generally speaking, the problem of words’ classification into parts of speech is far from being solved. Some words cannot find their proper place. The most striking example here is the class of adverbs. Some language analysts call it a ragbag, a dustbin (Frank Palmer), Russian academician V.V.Vinogradov defined

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the class of adverbs in the Russian language as мусорная куча. It can be explained by the fact that to the class of adverbs belong those words that cannot find their place anywhere else. At the same time, there are no grounds for grouping them together either. Compare: perfectly (She speaks English perfectly) and again (He is here again). Examples are numerous (all temporals). There are some words that do not belong anywhere - e.g. after all. Speaking about after all it should be mentioned that this unit is quite often used by native speakers, and practically never by our students. Some more striking examples: anyway, actually, in fact. The problem is that if these words belong nowhere, there is no place for them in the system of words, then how can we use them correctly? What makes things worse is the fact that these words are devoid of nominative power, and they have no direct equivalents in Russian. Meanwhile, native speakers use these words subconsciously, without realizing how they work.

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Lecture 3

Noun and Its Categories

1.General characteristics.

2.The category of number.

3.The category of case.

4.The problem of gender.

5.The category of determination.

1. General characteristics

The noun is the central lexical unit of language. It is the main nominative unit of speech. As any other part of speech, the noun can be characterised by three criteria: semantic (the meaning), morphological (the form and grammatical categories) and syntactical (functions, distribution).

Semantic features of the noun. The noun possesses the grammatical meaning of thingness, substantiality. According to different principles of classification, nouns fall into several subclasses:

1.According to the type of nomination they may be proper and common;

2.According to the form of existence they may be animate and inanimate. Animate nouns in their turn fall into human and non-human.

3.According to their quantitative structure nouns can be countable and uncountable.

This set of subclasses cannot be put together into one table because of the

different principles of classification.

Morphological features of the noun. In accordance with the morphological structure of the stems all nouns can be classified into: simple, derived (stem + affix, affix + stem – thingness); compound (stem+ stem – armchair ) and composite (the Hague). The noun has morphological categories of number and case. Some scholars admit the existence of the category of gender.

Syntactic features of the noun. The noun can be used in the sentence in all syntactic functions but predicate. Speaking about noun combinability, we can say

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that it can go into right-hand and left-hand connections with practically all parts of speech. That is why practically all parts of speech but the verb can act as noun determiners. However, the most common noun determiners are considered to be articles, pronouns, numerals, adjectives and nouns themselves in the common and genitive case.

2. The category of number

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.

There are different approaches to defining the category of number. Thus, some scholars believe that the category of number in English is restricted in its realization because of the dependent implicit grammatical meaning of countableness/uncountableness. The category of number is realized only within subclass of countable nouns, i.e. nouns having numeric (discrete) structure. Uncountable nouns have no category of number, for they have quantitative (indiscrete) structure. Two classes of uncountables can be distinguished: singularia tantum (only singular) and pluralia tantum (only plural). M. Blokh, however, does not exclude the singularia tantum subclass from the category of number. He calls such forms absolute singular forms comparable to the ‘common’ singular of countable nouns.

In Indo-European languages there are lots of nouns that don’t fit into the traditional definition of the category based on the notion of quantity. A word can denote one object, but it has the plural form. Or a noun can denote more than one thing, but its form is singular. There is a definition of the category of number that overcomes this inconsistency. It was worked out by prof. Isachenko. According to him, the category of number denotes marked and unmarked discreteness (not quantity). A word in a singular form denotes unmarked discreteness whether it is a book, or a sheep, or sheep. If an object is perceived as a discrete thing, it has the form of the plural number. Thus, trousers and books are perceived as discrete object whereas a flock of sheep is seen as a whole. This definition is powerful

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because it covers nearly all nouns while the traditional definition excludes many words.

The grammatical meaning of number may not coincide with the notional quantity: the noun in the singular does not necessarily denote one object while the plural form may be used to denote one object consisting of several parts. The singular form may denote:

a)oneness (individual separate object – a cat);

b)generalization (the meaning of the whole class – The cat is a domestic

animal);

c)indiscreteness (нерасчлененность or uncountableness - money, milk). The plural form may denote:

a)the existence of several objects (cats);

b) the inner discreteness (внутренняя расчлененность, pluralia tantum, jeans).

To sum it up, all nouns may be subdivided into three groups:

1.The nouns in which the opposition of explicit discreteness/indiscreteness is expressed: cat::cats;

2.The nouns in which this opposition is not expressed explicitly but is revealed by syntactical and lexical correlation in the context. There are two groups here:

A.Singularia tantum. It covers different groups of nouns: proper names, abstract nouns, material nouns, collective nouns;

B.Pluralia tantum. It covers the names of objects consisting of several parts (jeans), names of sciences (mathematics), names of diseases, games, etc.

3.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.

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3. The category of case

In present-day linguistics case is used in two senses: 1) semantic, or logic, and 2) syntactic.

The semantic case concept was developed by C. J. Fillmore in the late 1960s. 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.

The syntactic case concept dates back to the grammars of Ancient Greece

and Ancient Rome. It is a case whose main role is to indicate a relationship between constituents. To put it otherwise, its role is to indicate a construction in syntax. Thus genitive is a case which marks one noun as dependent on another, e.g. John’s car. The conception of case as a marker of a syntactic relation or a construction can be found in prescriptive, non-structural descriptive and structural descriptive grammars. Prescriptivists spoke of the nominative, the dative, the genitive, the accusative, and the ablative.

H. Sweet’s views (1925) rest on the syntactic conception of case: case to him is a syntactic relation that can be realized syntactically or morphologically. He speaks of inflected and non-inflected cases (the genitive vs. the common case). Non-inflected cases, according to the scholar, are equivalent to the nominative, vocative, accusative, and dative of inflected languages.

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O. Jespersen (1933) speaks of the genitive and the common case. Some grammarians (R. W. Pence (1947), H. Whitehall (1965), H. Shaw (1952)) give three cases in English - nominative, genitive (possessive) and accusative (objective). This three-case system, based on the analogy of the form of pronouns, remained extremely popular in the grammars of the 20th century, including some structural grammars (H. Whitehall). H. Whitehall, however, does not reflect the general situation in the school of structural grammar: structuralists at large recognize the existence of two cases - the genitive and the common.

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:

1.Possessive Genitive : Mary’s father – Mary has a father,

2.Subjective Genitive: The doctor’s arrival – The doctor has arrived,

3.Objective Genitive : The man’s release – The man was released,

4.Genitive of origin: the boy’s story – the boy told the story,

5.Descriptive Genitive: children’s books – books for children

6.Genitive of measure and partitive genitive: a mile’s distance, a day’s trip

7.Appositive genitive: the city of London.

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.

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

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1.There are two cases. (limited case theory) 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;

3.There are three cases: the Nominative, the Genitive, the Objective due to the existence of objective pronouns me, him, whom;

4.The theory of positional cases.

5.The theory of prepositional cases.

We adhere to the view that English does possess the category of case, which is represented by the opposition of the two forms - the genitive vs. the nongenitive, or the common. The marked member of the opposition is the genitive and the unmarked the common: both members express a relation - the genitive expresses a specific relation (the relation of possession in the wide meaning of the word) while the common case expresses a wide range of relations including the relation of possession, e.g. Kennedy’s house vs. the Kennedy house. While recognizing the existence of the genitive case, we must say that the English genitive is not a classical case. Its peculiarities are:

1)the inflection -‘s is but loosely connected with the noun (e.g. the Queen of England’s daughter; the man I met yesterday’s son);

2)genitive constructions are paralleled by corresponding prepositional constructions (e.g. Shakespeare’s works vs. the works of Shakespeare);

3)the use of the genitive is mainly limited to nouns denoting living beings;

4)the inflection -‘s is used both in the singular and in the plural (e.g. a boy’s bicycle vs. the boys’ bicycles), which is not typical of case inflexions.

4. The Problem of Gender in English

In Indo-European languages the category of gender is presented with flexions. It is not based on sex distinction, but it is purely grammatical.