Lecture 3 noun: general. Gender. Number.

1. Noun as the central nominative lexemic unit of language. Categorial meaning of the noun. Formal characteristics of the noun. Syntactic functions of the noun. The noun as an attribute (“the cannon ball problem”).

2. Grammatically relevant subclasses. The grammatical peculiarities of different groups of nouns. Their selectional syntagmatic combinability.

3. The problem of gender category in English. Gender as a meaningful (natural) category and as a formal (arbitrary) category in different languages. Personal pronouns as gender classifiers of nouns. Gender oppositions of nouns. Oppositional reduction; personification.

4. Formal and functional peculiarities of the singular and the plural forms of nouns. Their oppositional presentation.

5. The absolute singular (singularia tantum) number and the absolute plural (pluralia tantum) number. Oppositional reduction of the category for different groups of nouns.

Key terms: thingness, “the cannon ball problem”, common noun, proper noun, animate/ inanimate noun, human/non-human noun, countable/uncountable noun, concrete/abstract noun, selectional syntagmatic combinability

- biological sex, gender, gender agreement, formal category, meaningful category, gender classifiers, obligatory correlation, person/non-person nouns, neuter/feminine/masculine nouns, common gender, personification

- the singular/plural, (non-)productive means, (non-) dismembering (discrete, divisible) reflection of the referent, singularia tantum (absolute singular), pluralia tantum (absolute plural), generic use, lexicalization, collective meaning, descriptive plural, repetition plural

1. Noun as the central nominative lexemic unit of language. Categorial meaning of the noun. Formal characteristics of the noun. Syntactic functions of the noun. The noun as an attribute (“the cannon ball problem”).

The categorial meaning of the noun is “substance” or “thingness”. Nouns directly name various phenomena of reality and have the strongest nominative force among notional parts of speech: practically every phenomenon can be presented by a noun as an independent referent, or, can be substantivized. Nouns denote things and objects proper (tree), abstract notions (love), various qualities (bitterness), and even actions (movement). All these words function in speech in the same way as nouns denoting things proper.

Formally, the noun is characterized by a specific set of word-building affixes and word-building models, which mark a noun: suffixes of the doer (worker, naturalist, etc.), suffixes of abstract notions (laziness, rotation, security, elegance, etc.), special conversion patterns (to find – a find), etc. As for word-changing categories, the noun is changed according to the categories of number (boy-boys), case (boy-boy’s), and article determination (boy, a boy, the boy). Formally the noun is also characterized by specific combinability with verbs, adjectives and other nouns. The noun is the only part of speech which can be prepositionally combined with other words, e.g.: the book of the teacher, to go out of the room, away from home, typical of the noun, etc.

The most characteristic functions of the noun in a sentence are the function of a subject and an object, since they commonly denote persons and things as components of the situation, e.g.: The teacher took the book. Besides, the noun can function as a predicative (part of a compound predicate), e.g.: He is a teacher; and as an adverbial modifier, e.g.: It happened last summer. The noun in English can also function as an attribute in the following cases: when it is used in the genitive case (the teacher’s book), when it is used with a preposition (the book of the teacher), or in contact groups of two nouns the first of which qualifies the second (cannon ball, space exploration, sea breeze, the Bush administration, etc.).

The last case presents a special linguistic problem, which is sometimes referred to as “the cannon ball problem”. One aspect of the problem can be formulated in the following way:

• is it a contact group of two nouns or

• is the first word in this phrase an adjective homonymous with a noun?

The arguments which support the former point of view are as follows: - the first word in such contexts does not display any other qualities of the adjective, except for the function, - it can not form the degrees of comparison, - it cannot be modified by an adverb, etc.; besides, - sometimes the first noun in such groups may be used in the plural, e.g.: translations editor. - An additional argument is purely semantic, cf.: a dangerous corner – a danger signal; the adjective dangerous describes the thing referred to by the following noun, so it is possible to ask a question “What kind of …?”, while the noun danger tells us what the purpose of the signal is, so the possible question is “What is it for?”

Another aspect of “the cannon ball problem” is as follows:

- can the components of such contact groups be considered as two separate words, or, as some linguists maintain,

- is it a kind of a compound word?

The arguments which support the former point of view are as follows: - a compound word is a stable, ready-made lingual unit, fixed in dictionaries, while most “noun + noun” groups are formed freely in speech; besides, - they can be easily transformed into other types of word-combinations e.g., prepositional word-combinations: a cannon ball à a ball for cannon, space exploration à exploration of space, etc.; - compound words as a rule need additional transformations which explain their “inner form”, or etymological motivation, e.g.: a waterfall – water of a stream, river, etc., falling straight down over rocks. So, combinations like space exploration are combinations of two nouns, the first of which is used as an attribute of the other. - They may include several noun attributes, especially in scientific style texts, e.g.: population density factor, space exploration programmes, etc.