25)The Noun. Definition, gram.Categories, kinds (proper, common)

The nounis one of the oldest parts of speech used to denote substances. it expresses the idea of substantivity. As any part of speech it is characterized from three sides: lexical, morphological, and syntactical.

The lexical meaning of the noun is that of a thing. This is the general meaning of the class. Most nouns denote concrete things: a book, a table, an elephant. Here belong also nouns denoting abstract ideas: love, pleasure: actions: laughter, qualities: kindness.

Thus, the lexical meaning of a noun is that of a thing or of an abstract idea, action, quality, presented as a thing.

- names applied to any individual of a class to distinguish them from other individuals of the same class or a group of individuals: John, Moscow, the Alps.

a) class-nouns (a man, a book)

b) names of materials expressing the whole mass of matter (iron, snow, air, water)

c) abstract nouns turned into concrete (a beauty, a youth)

- names of actions, states or qualities (conversation, reading, love, kindness, strength, time, summer, thunder, day)

regarded as a single object

a) having both numbers (a family, a crew, families. crews; a people, peoples)

b) names of multitude (cattle, poultry, police) -the}' are always plural

c) used always in singular (foliage, leafage, linen, money, crockery, youth)

d) used only in the plural (goods, belongings, clothes, sweepings, tidings)

The syntactical characteristics of a noun are the following: it may be a subject, an object, a predicative in a sentence. It may also be used in some other functions but they are not characteristic of a noun.

As to its combinability nouns may combine with verbs, adjectives, pronouns. The noun may be associated with articles and governed by prepositions.

The morphological characteristicsof a noun is limited to two categories: the category of number and the category of case.

Number - count nouns have singular and plural forms. In Modern English the singular form of a noun is unmarked (zero). The plural form is marked by the inflexion -(e)s. Irregular plurals: man, tooth, mouse… Invariable nouns: tea, sugar, gold, news, proper nouns.

Case - shows relation of the noun with other words in a sentence. It is expressed by the form of the noun.

English nouns have two cases: the common case (unmarked, it has no inflexion (zero inflexion) and its meaning is very general) and the genitive case (is marked by ‘s).=possessive

Gender does not find regular morphological expression. The distinction of male, female, and neuter may correspond to the lexical meaning of the noun: boy, girl, table.

26)The problem of Gender (generic notion)

Gendercannot be regarded as a grammatical category in Modern English because there are no special grammatical means of expressing the category of gender. In English the form of the noun does not show any relations that may be admitted as gender relations.

In Modern English there is no grammatical agreement between nouns and adjectives, e.g. a clever boy, a clever girl, a clever remark, while in Russian we have this grammatical agreement, e.g. умный мальчик, умная девочка, умное замечание. Thus, we may say that in Modern English there are no grammatical indications of the category of gender. But we can speak of the so-called generic notion, which may be expressed in three ways:

1) By means of the lexical meaning of some words: such nouns as man, husband, boy. It goes without saying that these nouns or rather substances expressed by these nouns refer to the male sex and historically these nouns are referred to the group of nouns of the masculine gender.

2) In Modern English there are some pairs of words, such as waiter -waitress, god - goddess, lion - lioness, host — hostess, heir - heiress, tiger - tigress. The suffix -ess serves to express substances of the female sex. However this suffix cannot be treated as a form building suffix. This means that the suffix -ess serves for the formation of new words but not forms of one and the same word. This statement may be proved by the fact that the suffix -ess is typical of very few nouns in Modern English. The same may be said about such pairs of words as widow-widower, bride-bride-groom. In these words we also deal with the word-building suffixes.

3) Among the words denoting living beings we find a number of words which do not indicate sex: enemv, neighbour, cousin, teacher, etc. Nearly all the nouns derived from words denoting agents (doers of an action) also belong here: reader, professor, engineer, doctor. On account of social tradition many words which may denote at present both male and female beings are practically always used of men only. e.g. shoemaker, baker, lawyer.

When a special indication of sex is wanted with the word which does not express any sex, we use such words as: boy, girl, man, woman, male, female, he, she or some proper nouns, e.g. she-wolf, lady-bird, male-elephant, cock-sparrow, hen-sparrow, jack-ass, jenny-ass, billy-goat, nanny-goat, tom­cat, girl-cousin, maid-servant.

When abstract notions are personified, the masculine gender is given to nouns suggesting such ideas as strength, fierceness, etc. while the feminine is associated with the idea of gentleness, beauty, etc.:

Masculine: anger, death, fear. war. hail.

Feminine: spring, peace, kindness, dawn.