TG_Lektsia_3_NOUN_full

1.

Lecture 3:
THE NOUN

2.

Plan:
1. General characteristics of the
Noun as a part of speech.
2. Number.
3. Case.
4. The problem of gender in modern
English.

3.

4.

SEMANTIC FEATURES
Type of nomination
proper
Moscow,John
common
city, man

5.

6.

SEMANTIC FEATURES:
Form of existence
animate
inanimate
table
Human
non-human
man, doctor
dog, bird

7.

SEMANTIC FEATURES
Quantitative structure
Countable
book
uncountable
milk,information

8.

SEMANTIC FEATURES
Form of representation
concrete
abstract
Man, book
hatred, music

9.

10.

SEMANTIC FEATURES
Minor types
Material (=mass)
Milk, snow
collective
clothes, family

11.

12.

Morphological features:
According to morphemic structure:
•Simple (pen)
•Derived (dark/ness)
•Compound (armchair)
•Composite (sister-in-law, forget-me-not)

13.

Morphological features:
(grammatical categories):
•Number (Sg/Pl)
•Case (Common/possessive)

14.

Syntactic features:
Perform
functions!!!
ALL
syntactic
The only exception – predicate (but it can
be a predicative:
He is (a teacher).

15.

Distributional features:
Can be combined with almost
ALL parts of speech:
A pen (article)
A summer dress (a noun)
the boy reads
(a verb).
A clever boy (adjective)
Two boys (numeral)
The seat behind (adverb)

16.

NUMBER
2 forms
Different:
Same:
1 form
Sg
(=singularia
Book-books Swine,deer, tantum):
Man-men
sheep
milk, air
-s
-0
-s
-0
a sheep/0
2 sheep/0
Pl
(=pluralia
tantum):
jeans,
clothes

17.

Lexicalization of the inflection:
a)book/0 (= 1 object)
book/s (= more than 1 object)
=> “-s” is an INFLECTION
b)snow/0 ( an uncountable notion)
snow/s
-a great amount of smth.
-stylistic colouring

18.

CASE
-limitive case theory (traditional - 2 cases:
Common/Possessive, both are polysemantic)
-semantic theories (1 meaning=1 case (an indefinite
number of cases)
-prepositional theories (preposition is also a marker
of case (4, 6, indefinite number of cases). E.g.
Nom/Gen/Dat/Acc
-substitutional theory (pronouns) (3 cases:
Nominative /Possessive/Objective)
The boy (he = nom) met his brother (him=obj)
-postpositional theory (case as a morphological
category does not exist)

19.

CASE
-postpositional theory
-’s
The (Queen of England) ’s residence
The (Oxford professor of poetry)’s lecture
(it’s a syntactic phenomenon , -s is a postposition,
but not an inflection of ONE word.
-So the noun itself is not marked morphologically;
-So case as a morphological category does not
exist at all.)
‘Group genitive’
(belongs to syntactic level !!!!)

20.

THE PROBLEM OF GENDER
LEXICAL MEANS
DERIVATIONAL MEANS
Boy- girl
Cock- hen
He-cat – she-cat
Waiter –waitress
Lion – lioness
Compare:
учитель-ница, Lehrer-in
!!! But no MORHOLOGICAL means
(inflections)
=> Gender as a MORHOLOGICAL
category does not exist now.