Chapter V noun: general
The noun as a part of speech has the categorial meaning of "substance" or "thingness". It follows from this that the noun is the main nominative part of speech, effecting nomination of the fullest value within the framework of the notional division of the lexicon.
This natural and practically unlimited substantivisation force establishes the noun as the central nominative lexemic unit of language.
At that time he was down in his career, but we knew well that very soon he would be up again.— His career had its ups and downs.
This natural and practically unlimited substantivisation force establishes the noun as the central nominative lexemic unit of language.
Semantic properties.
The old woman is resting (Subject).
Please give that man some money (Objective Complement).
Washington was the first President of the United Stales (Subjective Noncircumstantial Complement).
Mary lives in London (Subjective Circumstantial Complement).
Mary is working in London (Circumstantial Adjunct).
The speech of the President — the President's speech (The casal (possessive) combinability)
English nouns can also easily combine with one (E.g.: a cannon ball; a log cabin; a sports event; film festivals). The lexico-grammatical status of such combinations has presented a big problem for many scholars. Soviet linguists offered is the isolability test (a cannon ball→ a ball for cannon; progress report → report about progress). The corresponding compound nouns (formed from substantive stems), as a rule, cannot undergo the isolability test.
Formal
word-building distinctions, including typical suffixes, compound stem models, conversion patterns. Grammatical categories of gender, number, case, article determination.
Classification
quantitative structure
countable and uncountable (исчисляемые неисчисляемые)
type of nomination
countable: proper and common nouns. (собственные и нарицательные)
form of existence
proper: animate and inanimate (одушевленные и неодушевленные)
personal quality
animate:human and non-human (личностные и неличностные – в зависимости от того как можно назвать – he, she, it)
concrete and abstract.(конкретные и абстрактные)
collective noun describes a group of things or people as a unit (family, flock, audience...
Compound nouns refer to two or more nouns combined to form a single noun (sister-in-law, schoolboy, fruit juice)
Chapter VI noun: gender
1. It is one of English language’s problems. Does it really exist or not?
upper opposition - all nouns: person (human) nouns and non-person (non-human) nouns
lower opposition - person nouns only:masculine nouns and feminine nouns.
GENDER
Feminine Nouns Masculine Nouns
A great many person nouns in English are capable of expressing both feminine and masculine person genders by way of the pronominal correlation in question. These are referred to as nouns of the "common gender". Here belong such words as person, parent, friend, cousin, doctor, president, etc. E.g.:
In the plural, all the gender distinctions are neutralised in the immediate explicit expression, though they are rendered obliquely through the correlation with the singular.
3. English nouns can show the sex of their referents lexically, either by means of being combined with certain notional words used as sex indicators, or else by suffixal derivation. Cf.: boy-friend, girl-friend; man-producer, woman-producer; washer-man, washer-woman; landlord, landlady; bull-calf, cow-calf; cock-sparrow, hen-sparrow; he-bear, she-bear; master, mistress; actor, actress; executor, executrix; lion, lioness; sultan, sultana; etc.
On the other hand, when the pronominal relation of the non-person animate nouns is turned, respectively, into he and she, we can speak of a grammatical personifying transposition, very typical of English. This kind of transposition affects not only animate nouns, but also a wide range of inanimate nouns, being regulated in every-day language by cultural-historical traditions. Compare the reference of she with the names of countries, vehicles, weaker animals, etc.; the reference of he with the names of stronger animals, the names of phenomena suggesting crude strength and fierceness, etc.
4. As we see, the category of gender in English is inherently semantic, i.e. meaningful in so far as it reflects the actual features of the named objects. But the semantic nature of the category does not in the least make it into "non-grammatical", which follows from the whole content of what has been said in the present work.
In Russian characterised by the gender division of nouns, the gender has purely formal features that may even "run contrary" to semantics. Suffice it to compare such Russian words as стакан — он, чашка—она, блюдце — оно, But this phenomenon is rather an exception than the rule in terms of grammatical categories in general.
Moreover, alongside of the "formal" gender, there exists in Russian and other "formal gender" languages meaningful gender, featuring, within the respective idiomatic systems, the natural sex distinctions of the noun referents.
Russian gender differs idiomatically from the English gender in so far as it divides the nouns by the higher opposition not into "person — non-person" ("human— non human"), but into "animate —inanimate", discriminating within the former (the animate nounal set) between masculine, feminine, and a limited number of neuter nouns. Thus, the Russian category of gender essentially divides the noun into the inanimate set having no meaningful gender, and the animate set having a meaningful gender. In distinction to this, the English category of gender is only meaningful, and as such it is represented in the nounal system as a whole.