- •16. Word-building
- •17. Modern English phraseology
- •Structure of word-groups
- •Meaning of word-groups
- •Motivation in word-groups
- •Structural class-ion
- •Etimological class-ion
- •Proverbs
- •18.Lexico-semantic grouping in Modern English lexicone
- •19. The Latin borrowings of different periods.
- •20.French as the most important foreign influence on the English language
- •21.The Noun
- •Category of number
- •The category of case
- •Category of Animateness - Inanumateness
- •22.The Verb
- •The category of aspect
- •23. The Phrase
- •Classification of predicative word-groups
- •Absolute Predicative Word Groups
- •Syntactical Relations between the Components of Phrase
- •The Theory of Phrase
- •24. The Sentence
- •Classification of Sentences
- •Types of Sentences According to Structure
- •Types of One-member Sentences in English
- •Types of Sentences According to their Completeness
- •25. Categorial structure of the word
- •26.The theory of phoneme
- •27. Lexical stylistic devices. Lexico-syntactical stylistic devices.
- •Lexico-syntactical stylistic devices
- •28.The theory of intonation.
- •29. Phonetic and Graphical stylistic devices Phonetic stylistic devices
- •Pure Graphical Stylistic Devices
- •30. Syntactical stylistic devices
21.The Noun
The noun is the main nominative part of speech, having the categorical meaning of 'substance' and 'thingness'. The noun is characterized by a set of formal features. It has its word-building distinctions, including typical suffixes, compound stem models, conversion patterns. It has the grammatical categories of gender, numer, case, article determination. The most characteristic function of the noun is that of the subject in the sentence. The function of the object in the sentence is also typical of the noun, other syntactic functions, i.e. attribute, adverbial and even predicative are not immediately characteristic of its substantive quality. The noun is characterized by some special types of combinability. It is the prepositional combinability with another noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb.
E.g. an entrance to the house; to turn round the corner; red in the face; far from its destination. The casal combinability characterizes the noun alongside of its prepositional combinability with another noun. E.g. the speech of the President - the president's speech. English nouns can also easily combine with one another by sheer contact. In the contact group the noun in pre-position plays the role of a semantic qualifier to the noun in post-psition. E.g. film festivals, a cannon ball.
The lexico-grammatical status of such combinations has been a big problem for many scholars, who were uncertain as to how to treat this combination, either as one separate compound word or a word-group.
In the history of linguistics it is called 'The cannon ball problem' (or the stone wall problem).
Category of Gender (expression of gender)
In modern English gender as a grammatical category is characteristic of the 3-d person singular of the personal and reflexive pronouns: he - she - it; himself - herself - itself. The dividion of nouns into masculine, feminine and neuter nouns (father, mother, table) is not grammatical but semantic.
The only gender - forming suffix of the feminine gender '-ess' is limited in use (actress, tigress, lioness). The masculine forming suffix '-er' is added only to one noun - window - windower. English nouns denoting anymals are usually referred to neuter gender as nouns denoting inanimate things (Where is the cat? - It is in the garden). When the idea of sex is stressed, such nouns may be of masculine or feminine gender, and sex if often shown by special words, i.e. lexically: Tom - cat, she - cat, lady - cat, male - elephant, he - dog, etc. In poetry and high prose Engish nouns get gender reference when personified (love, sun, hatred, anger (m), moon (f)). This is a traditional personification which originates from Latin literature. In English fables, fairy tales, nouns are personified and get gender at the writer's will: Next day the Rabbit went to see his friend the Sable; she had many daughters. Feminine gender is given to a noun denoting an animal, bird or insect when maternal instinct is referred to: e.g. A bird betrays her nest we trying to conceal it. When abstract nouns are personified, masculine gender is given to nouns denoting strength, strong feelings (anger, death, fear, war), feminine gender - to nouns associated with the idea of gentleness (beauty, peace, spring, kindness, dawn, etc). In English soldiers' and sailors' slang nouns denoting vessels and vehicles are referred to feminine gender affectionally: she is a good boat. The new ship has started on her maiden voyage.