The noun

The noun is the central lexical unit of the language. It’s the main nominative unit of speech.

Semantic features of a noun

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

1. according to the type of nomination: proper and common

2. according to the form of existence: animate and inanimate

Animate nouns fall into: human and non-human

3. according to their quantitative structure: countable and uncountable

Morphological features of a noun

In accordance with a morphological structure of the stems all nouns can be classified into:

• simple (neither suffix nor prefix)

• derived (either suffix or prefix or both)

• compound (2 or more stems)

• composite (2 or more stems with suffixes or prefixes)

Syntactic features of nouns

The noun can be used in all syntactic functions but predicate.

It can go into right-hand and left-hand connections with practically all parts of speech.

The category of number

It is the linguistic representation of the objective category of quantity.

Number category is realized through the opposition of 2 form-classes:

• the plural form

• the singular form

The singular form may denote:

1. oneness (individual separate object, ex.: a cat)

2. generalization (the meaning of the whole class, ex.: the cat is a domestic animal)

3. indiscreetness or uncountableness, ex.: money, milk

The plural form may denote:

1. the existence of several objects, ex.: cats

2. the inner discreetness, ex.: jeans

The category of case

It expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word group or sentence.

It is realized through the opposition: the common case – the possessive case.

There is no universal point to the view as to the case system in English.

Ilyish: Case is a category of a noun expressing relations between the things denoted by a noun and other things or properties and which is manifested in the noun itself.

Boy – the zero-morpheme is a formal sign for the formal case.

Bloch: case is the immanent morphological category of the noun manifested in the forms of noun declension and showing the relations of the nounal referent to other objects and phenomena. It may be called the limited case theory.

Different scholars stick to a different number of cases.

Charles Fillmore distinguished 6 cases (syntactic, semantic approach):

• agentive case, ex.: John opened the door (John – the doer)

• instrumental case, ex.: The key opened the door

• dative case, ex.: John believed that he would win (the case of the animate being affected by the state or action identified by the verb)

• factitive case, ex.: The key was damaged (the result of the action or state identified by the verb)

• locative case, ex.: Chicago is windy

• objective case, ex.: John stole the book

John Lyons distinguished 7 cases (semantic approach):

• nominative case, ex.: Tom died.

• acusative case, ex.: John killed Tom.

• dative case, ex.: John gave the money to Tom. John gave Tom the money.

• genetive case, ex.: It was John’s money

• instrumental case, ex.: John killed Tom with a knife

• agentive case, ex.: Tom was killed by Bill. By Bill – agent of the action

• comitative case (in the company with), ex.: Bill went to Tom with Mary

There are no cases at all.

The category of case has been destroyed by the theory of possessive postposition by professor Voronzova. She considers that it has the same grammatical function as a preposition. She denies the cases because these prepositional elements may be applied not to nouns but also to other words.