7. The noun. The category of number.

The Noun as a part of speech is singled out on the basis of the following criteria:

• 1. categorial lexico-grammatical meaning of substance, "thingness»: names of concrete objects, living beings, properties, actions, relations, etc. presented as self-dependent substances:

tree, wolf, length, intelligence, talk, friendship

• 2. morphological categories of Number, Case, Gender and Determination (definiteness / indefiniteness);

• 3. typical word-building patterns:

(a) suffixation: -er, -ship, -ness, -ment, -ity, -ion, etc;

(b) compounding: N+N: airmail; A+N: bluebell; Ger+N: looking-glass, etc;

(c) conversion: from Verbs: talk, walk; from Adj: native, German, etc.

• 4. Combinability:

(a) left-hand connections with Prep, Adj, N, Num, Prn, V; also A;

(b) right-hand connections with Prep, V, N.

• 5. Syntactic function: Subject and Object.

Subcategorization of Nouns:

• According to the type of nomination: common vs proper;

• According to the form of existence: animate vs inanimate and human (personal) vs non-human (non-personal) (Case, Gender);

• According to the quantitative characteristics: countable vs uncountable (Number);

• According to the nature of the object denoted: concrete vs abstract.

THE CATEGORY OF NUMBER

Singular ^--

• the weak (unmarked) member of the opposition, both in form and in meaning;

• no positive mark;

broad and indefinite grammatical meaning

Plural ⁺

• the strong (marked) member of the opposition;

• marked by a special morpheme of plurality;

concrete and bright grammatical meaning

Morpheme of plurality:

Productive:

-(e)s:

allomorphs

[s] [z] [iz]

books boys boxes

cats girls places

Unproductive:

• -en: children, oxen

• 0: sheep, salmon

• vowel interchange:

man – men, goose – geese, etc.

• Greek & Latin endings:

a – ae, um – a, us – i,

grammatical meanings of the categorial forms of Number

Countable

• Singular — «oneness»

• Plural — «more-than-oneness»

Uncountable

• Singularia Tantum

(cream, advice, money)

• Pluralia Tantum

(scissors, goods, cattle)

NUMBER OF THE NOUN

1 Discrete

count uncount

Sg & Pl Pl

2 Indiscrete

uncountable

Sg (milk, butter, news.)

8. The noun. The category of case.

THE CATEGORY OF CASE (inflectional variation of the Noun): a nominal category established by the opposition of the categorial forms of the noun expressing relations between the noun and other words in the sentence.

CASE

Common ^--

student —

students —

• unmarked (vague, indefinite) meaning

Possessive / Genitive ⁺

— student’s

— students’

* marked Plurals:

children’s, men’s, women’s

• marked meaning (limitation of the noun reference)

Meanings of the Genitive Case:

• Possession: the boy’s toy the boy has a toy;

• origin: Shaw’s plays Shaw wrote the plays;

• social relations: Judy’s friends;

• part of a whole: the girl’s eyes;

• subjective Genitive:

the student’s reply the student replied;

• objective Genitive:

Napoleon’s defeat X defeated Napoleon / Napoleon was defeated by X;

• quantitative Genitive: three miles’ walk;

• qualitative / descriptive Genitive:

angel’s smile, sheep’s eyes

• Lexicalization of the Genitive case morpheme (locative meaning):

baker’s, florist’s, St Paul’s

The Genitive Case is used with the following groups of nouns:

• names of persons (the boy's shirt, George Washington's statue);

• collective nouns (the government's statement, the nation's social security);

• higher animals (the horse's hoof, the lion's tail);

• locative nouns (Europe's future, the school's history);

• temporal nouns (a moment's thought);

The Theory of Prepositional / Analytical Cases (G. Curme):

Counterarguments:

• Prepositions preserve their lexical meaning;

• The number of “prepositional” cases is not definite;

• some prepositional constructions are synonymous with the synthetic case forms:

my dog's toys = the toys of my dog

Relations between words in the sentence can be expressed:

• Morphologically (by means of case forms);

• Syntactically (by means of prepositions and word order).

The category of case of the English noun has not disappeared but has radically transformed:

• The grammatical meaning of the opposition is limitation / non-limitation of the noun reference.

• The case inflection has acquired mobility within the noun phrase.

• The semantic and syntactic capacity of the category has narrowed.

• The present category of case is subsidiary to the syntactic expression of the relations of the noun.