3. Noun determiners

The most characteristic divergent feature of English nouns as compared with the Ukrainian ones is their usually indistinct lexical and grammatical nature at a language level. Singular count nouns cannot be used alone, but always take a determiner. As a result, determiners (articles, numbers, personal, possessive or demonstrative pronouns: some, any, no, a few, a little, each, every, an/other, that, these, etc.) are used to identify them. We’ve killed a pig. He was eating another apple. She had read every book on the subject. I parked the car over there. Plural count nouns can be used with or without a determiner. They do not take a determiner when they refer to things or people in general: Does the hotel have large rooms? The film is not suitable for children. Plural count nouns do take a determiner when they refer precisely to a particular things or people: Our computers are very expensive. These cakes are delicious.

Modern grammar uses the term ‘determiner’ for words which determine or limit not just the noun but also a noun phrase that follows.

The noun phrase is a word or words functioning in a sentence like a noun. The noun is said to be ‘head’ of the phrase. For example in ’all these rules’ rules is the head. Modification of the noun can be elaborate. It can involve

1. Premodification (before the noun), usually by single words: All these rules! All these difficult grammatical rules. These rather more difficult rules;

2. Postmodification (after the noun), which often takes the form of a reduced clause: a girl with red hair, a world record out of the blue (несподівано), loaf of bread, a stale piece of cheese; a girl who/that lives next door; a place where I should hate to live; the hearts and minds of the many who had voted for the alliance with secret misgivings.

4. Functions of nouns in a sentence

The most reliable indication of nouns is position and function. They can fit into certain functional slots in a sentence. The main syntactical functions of nouns are:

• A subject:

Life consists of accepting one’s duty. A milk cart rattled noisily across the distant prospective.

• An object (direct, indirect and prepositional):

You did such splendid work. Violet fetched the glasses.

General Drake handed the man his medal. He won’t listen to any advice.

• A predicative (non-prepositional and prepositional):

The town has always been a quite and dignified little place. The place was in disorder.

• An objective predicative, or a subjective predicative:

He was appointed squadron commander. They elected him president of the club.

• Various adverbial modifies (usually as a part of prepositional phrases):

I lived near Victoria station in those years.

He spoke in a different tone.

• An attribute (in the genitive case, in the common case and as a part of prepositional phrases): His officer’s uniform gave slimness to his already heavy figure.

For some time he read all the travel books he could lay his hands on.

He set off on a tour of inspection.

• An apposition (прикладка): Mr. Jeremy Brown, the chairman;

She told us about her father, a teacher, who died in the war.

The syntactical function of the genitive case is that of an attribute. It is always used as a premodifier of a noun and is sometimes called the dependent genitive. However there are some cases when the noun in the genitive case is not followed by the headword and then stands for the whole noun phrase. This is so-called absolute genitive. It is used:

• To avoid repetition: Our car is cheaper than Peter’s (than Peter’s car).

• After the preposition of: an old friend of my mother’s, that cousin of my husband’s.

• To denote shops: the butcher’s, the baker’s, the grocer’s, the chemist’s, the jeweller’s or institutions and places: St James’s (Palace), at Timothy’s, at my uncle’s.

Lecture # 4