7.Gram. Category of the Noun. Case.

The noun is the main nominative part of speech, having: 1) the categorial meaning of “substance” & “thingness”.2)The noun is characterized by some formal features: typical suffixes, compound stem models, conversion patterns.3)It has the gram. categories of gender, number, case, article determination. 4)The most characteristic function of the noun is that of the subject in the sentence. function of the object is also typical. Other syntactic functions, i.e. attribute, adverbial & even predicative are not immediately characteristic of its substantive quality. 5)The noun is characterized by some special types of combinability. It is the prepositional combinability with another noun, a verb, an adj., an adv. E.g. an entrance to the house(noun); to turn round the corner(verb); red in the face(adj); far from its destination(adv).

The combinability of case also characterizes the noun alongside of its prepositional combinability with another noun. E.g. the speech of the President - the president's speech. E.nouns can also easily combine with one another by sheer contact. In the contact group the noun in pre-position plays the role of an attribute to the noun in post-position. E.g. film festivals, a cannon ball. The lexico-gram. status of such combinations was a big problem to how to treat this combination: either as one separate compound word or a word-group. “The cannon ball problem” (or the stone wall problem).

The category of case Case is the immanent morphological category of the noun, showing the relations of the object to other objects & phenomena. It is expressed by the opposition of the form in -'s [z, s, iz] usually called the possessive case, or more traditionally, the genitive case, to the unmarked form of the noun, usually called the “common” case.

The ’ serves to distinguish in writing the singular noun in the genitive case from the plural noun in the common case. Phonetically, the genitive of the most nouns in the plural is not expressed (the actresses' dresses) few exceptions of the irregular plurals: e.g., the children's room. But the common case may express the genitive meaning, e.g. the leg of the table. The category became the problems of theoretical discussions.

1)The Theory of Positional Cases (Deutschbein):the unchangable forms of the noun may express different cases due to the functional positions occupied by the noun in the sentence. On the analogy of classical Latin grammar the E. noun can have nominative, vocative, dative & accusative cases, which are not inflectional, & the inflectional genitive case. E.g. the nominative case: The letter is here. (subject to a verb); the vocative case: (address) Are you ready, students?; the dative case: (indirect object to a verb) She gave the students some books; the accusative case: (direct object & also object to a preposition) The books were given by the teacher; the genitive case- The boy’s room is here. This theory can not be accepted, because most of the cases in it are not formed with the help of the morphemes, but only with the help of functional characteristics, which can’t be regarded as morphemes.

2) The Theory of Prepositional Cases It is also connected with the old school grammar teaching. Combinations of nouns with prepositions should be understood as morphological case forms. Here belong the dative case (to + noun, for + noun) & the genitive case (of + noun), it should follow from this that not only the of-, to- & for- phrases, but also all the other prepositional phrases in E. must be regarded as analytical phrases. As a result, the total number of such cases would become indefinitely large (Ilyish), besides prepositions can’t be morphemes.

3) The Limited Case Theory It is most broadly accepted among linguists at present.(formulated-Sweet, Jespersen, developed- Smirnitsky, Barkhudarov). It is based on the opposition of the possessive or genitive form as the strong member & the common, or “non-genitive” from as the weak member. It is shown in full with animate nouns, & is restricted with inanimate nouns.

4) Postpositional Theory (No-Case Theory) insists that the E. noun has completely lost the category of case in the course of its historical development. The view is advanced by G.N. Vorontsova.

1) the postpositional element -'s is loosely connected with the noun, as it is used not only with single nouns, but also with whole word-groups. E.g. Somebody else's daughter. The blonde I had been dancing with's name was Bernice. The girl in my class's mother.; 2) the 's can be attached to few nouns denoting living beings, in other cases the parallel prepositional construction is used.

Opposing this theory linguists consider the previous examples stylistically marked, the more self-dependent the construction with the case-sign 's, the stronger the stylistic colouring. Besides, according to statistical observation, the 's sign is attached to individual nouns in 96% of its textual occurrences.

Though the main meaning of the genitive case is possession, it undergoes modifications depending on the lex. meaning of the noun: John's house - John has a house; John's happiness - John is happy; John's smile - John is smiling. The meaning of possession is limited to nouns denoting animate things while the genitive of the nouns denoting lifeless things is metaphoric. E.g. the river's brink. Nouns denoting units of distance & time in the Genitive case do not express possession at all: a month's leave, a mile's distance.

Many grammarians find the Genitive polysemantic as it expresses: 1. possession: John's car - John has an car; 2. subject of the action: Mary's dream - Mary has a dream, or Mary dreams; Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the possessive genitive & the subjective genitive. 3. Adverbial Genitive: 2 hour's work – X works for 2 hours; 4. Objective Genitive: John's surprise - John was surprised or X surprised John. 5. Destination Genitive: children's room - room for children. In Mod.E. the Genitive & the of-phrase are synonyms & that's why they can be used side by side - the so called double genitive: e.g. a picture of gr&father's. The genitive can be absolute (independent) & conjoint (dependent). The dependent genitive precedes the head-word & may be of 2 kinds: 1) The specific genitive (indicating the owner, the doer, bearer of state): uncle's car, my sister's illness. It can be replaced by the -of-phrase (except proper names). The minister's speech - the speech of the Minister; Mary's table. 2) The classifying genitive (indicating quality of the class of similar objects): sheep's eyes, summer's day, a doll's face, mother's care. This genitive cannot be replaced by the of - phrase, but it may easily become a set-phrase.