Lecture 5. The Noun.

5.1. General Characteristics.

The noun is the central nominative lexemic unit of language.

As any other part of speech, the noun can be characterised by three criteria: semantic (the meaning), morphological (the form and grammatical categories) and syntactical (functions, distribution).

The features of the noun within this triad are, correspondingly, the following:

1) The semantic features of the noun.

The noun possesses the categorial grammatical meaning of substance (‘thingness’). Nouns are divided into several subclasses, which can be grouped into four oppositional pairs.

1) According to the type of nomination they may be proper and common;

2) According to the form of existence they may be animate and inanimate;

3) According to their personal quality animate nouns fall into human and non-human;

4) According to their quantitative structure there may be countable and uncountable nouns.

The division of English nouns into concrete and abstract is realised less explicitly and rigorously.

2) The morphological features of the noun:

a) the changeable forms of number and case;

b) the specific suffixal forms of derivation (prefixes in English do not discriminate parts of speech as such);

c) compound stem models, conversion patterns;

In accordance with the morphological structure of the stems all nouns can be classified into: simple, derived ( stem + affix, affix + stem); compound ( stem+ stem) and composite ( the Hague ).

3) The syntactical features of the noun

a) the substantive functions in the sentence (subject, object, predicative – other syntactic functions of the noun (attributive, adverbial) can be referred to as non-substantive functions, i.e. not immediately characteristic of its substantive quality).

b) special types of combinability: prepositional connections with another noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb; modification by an adjective; the casal (possessive) combinability with another noun; combinability with another noun by sheer contact.

As a part of speech, the noun discriminates the grammatical categories of gender, number, case, article determination.

5.2. The Noun: Number.

The grammatical category of number is the linguistic representation of the objective category of quantity. The category of number is expressed by the opposition of the plural form of the noun to the singular form of the noun. The strong member of this binary opposition is the plural. Its productive formal mark is the grammatical suffix -(e)s [-z, -s, -iz ]. It correlates with the absence of the number suffix in the singular form of the noun.

Non-productive ways of expressing the number opposition are:

1. vowel interchange (man — men, woman — women, tooth — teeth, etc.),

2. the archaic suffix -(e)n supported by phonemic interchange (ox — oxen, child — children, cow — kine, brother — brethren),

3. the correlation of individual singular and plural suffixes in a number of borrowed nouns (formula — formulae, phenomenon — phenomena, alumnus— alumni, etc.).

4. in some cases the plural form of the noun is homonymous with the singular form (sheep, deer, fish).

The grammatical meaning of number may not coincide with the notional quantity: the noun in the singular does not necessarily denote one object while the plural form may be used to denote one object consisting of several parts.

The singular form may denote:

1) oneness (individual separate object – a cat);

2) generalization (the meaning of the whole class – The cat is a domestic animal);

3) indiscreteness (money, milk).

The plural form may denote:

1) the existence of several objects (cats);

2) the inner discreteness (jeans).

So ‘plurality’ in the grammatical sense, should be described as the potentially dismembering reflection of the structure of the referent, while ‘singularity’ will be understood as the non-dismembering reflection of the structure of the referent, i.e. the presentation of the referent in its indivisible entireness.

Therefore nouns may be subdivided into three groups:

1) The nouns in which the opposition of explicit discreteness/indiscreteness is expressed : cat – cats; (‘correlative/common’ singular and plural)

2) The nouns in which this opposition is not expressed explicitly but is revealed by syntactical and lexical correlation in the context. In terms of oppositions in the formation of the two subclasses of uncountable nouns the number opposition is ‘constantly’ (lexically) reduced either to the weak member (singularia tantum) or to the strong member (pluralia tantum).

a) Singularia tantum (the absolute singular) It covers different groups of nouns: abstract notions, names of the branches of professional activity, the names of mass-materials, the names of collective inanimate objects {foliage, fruit, furniture, machinery, etc.).

Common number with uncountable singular nouns can be expressed by means of combining them with words showing discreteness (such as bit, piece, item, sort).

b) Pluralia tantum (the absolute plural). Here belong nouns denoting objects consisting of two halves(jeans), nouns rendering the idea of indefinite plurality, both concrete and abstract (supplies, outskirts, clothes, parings; tidings, earnings, contents, politics; police), nouns expressing some sort of collective meaning (cattle, poultry), etc names of sciences (mathematics), names of diseases, games, etc.

The absolute plural forms can be divided into set absolute plural (objects of two halves) and non-set absolute plural (the rest). The set plural is also distinguished among the common plural forms (nouns denoting fixed sets of objects: eyes of the face, legs of the table, wheels of the vehicle, etc.)

The necessity of expressing definite numbers in cases of uncountable pluralia tantum nouns has brought about different suppletive combinations (collocations with such words as pair, set, group, bunch, etc).

Varieties of the absolute plural (distinguished by way of functional oppositional reduction):