Noun as a part of speech: general characteristics

The noun is the most numerous lexico-grammatical class of lexemes.It is but natural that it should be divided into subclasses. From the grammatical point of view most important is the division of nouns into countables and uncountables with regard to the category of number and into declinables and indeclinables with regard to the category of case.

according to M. Zubkov there are differentiated the following lexico-grammatical classes of nouns in re­gard to their semantic and morphological characteristics:

concrete and abstract nouns (іменники конкретні й абстракт­ні: ложка, парк — імовірність, кохання);

names of living beings and lifeless objects (назви істот і неістот: студент, дочка — технікум, завод);

common and propernouns (власні й загальні назви: Роман, Ірина, Львів, Канада — дівчина, хлопець, місто, держава);

material nouns (матеріально-речовинні: фтор, золото, кисень, нафта);

collective nouns (збірні: кіннота, огудиння, студентство, листя).

The English noun as a part of speech comprises the following fea­tures:

1. The lexico-grammatical meaning of “substantivity”.

2. Typical stem-building morphemes, as in: pacif- ist, work- er, friend- ship, manage-ment, etc.

3. The grammatical categories of number and case.

4. Typical combinability: left-hand connections with articles, prepositions, adjectives, possessive pronouns (also demonstra­tive pronouns, some indefinite and negative pronouns), other nouns, etc.; right-hand connections with nouns (creating the so called noun clusters), verbs.

5. The typical syntactic function of a subject, an object, a comple­ment or a predicative, less frequently attribute or other parts of the sentence.

Let us compare the English noun with its Ukrainian counterpart. The mentioned above five properties for distinguishing parts of speech will serve as the basis for comparison or tertium comparationis.

1. The lexico-grammatical meanings are similar.

2. The variety of lexico-grammatical morphemes is much greater for the Ukrainian noun.

3.1. The Ukrainian language possesses the category of gender which is absent in English. The category of gender in Ukrainian is a lexico-grammatical one, since not only grammatical features but also the semantic ones (that is a division according to sex, age) are taken into account: did — баба, сын — дочка} качка — каченя. Morphological characteristics are also of importance (suffixes and endings): студент — студентка, робітник — робітниця, etc. The grammatical meaning of the masculine, feminine and neuter gender is determined according to the main index — the ending of the nominative case singular as well as the genitive and the instrumental cases. For nouns of the masculine gender the most typical is zero ending, e.g.: степ, двір, хлопець, but also -а (я), -о, -e endings can be met, e.g.: батько, Микола, суддя, вовчище. Nouns of the feminine gender usually have the endings -а (я), e.g.: калина, земля, Роксолана, Надія; nouns with the zero ending can also be found, e.g.: зустріч, сіль, більшість. Nouns of the neuter gen­der have the endings, -о, -e, -я, e.g.: село, ноле, знання, дитя. Nouns of the so called common case (спільний рід — базіка, трудяга, нечепура, плакса) will belong relatively to the context either to the masculine or to the feminine gender.

In both languages we find the categories of number and case. But their opposemes, especially those of the category of case, differ greatly in the two languages:

a) a Ukrainian case opposeme contains six (or seven if we take into account the vocative cas,e) members unlike the English two- member case opposeme;

b) in English the “singular number, common case” grammeme is as a rule not marked. In Ukrainian any grammeme can be marked, e.g.: рука, вікно, etc.;

c) the productive number and case morphemes are standard in English (~(e)s and s) and jion-standard in Ukrainian (столи, стільці, книги; столів, стільців, книг, etc.);

d) number and case are sometimes expressed by separate mor­phemes in English (e.g., oxen's), while in Ukrainian they are in­separable (книга — книги, книги — книг);

e) а1though in both languages the meaning of case is the relation of H£)uns to other words in speech, the meaning of the possessive case is in the main narrowed to the relation to other nouns only, which distinguishes this case from other cases both in Ukrai­nian and in English.

Owing to the narrowness of the “ possessive case ” and the common case ” in English, is exceptionally wide. In fact, the extent of its meaning almost equals that of all six cases of Ukrainian nouns

3.2. Іn both languages nouns can be divided into countables and urlcountables, the latter into — singularia tantum (однинні іменники) and pluralia tantum (множинні іменники). In both languages uncountables have an oblique meaning of number” through the analogy in form and combinability with countables.

3.3. The number of Ukrainian nouns having no case opposites (невідмінювані іменники) is rather small, namely those of foreign origin with endings: -а(-я) (амплуа, Дюма), - у (-ю) (інтерв’ю, какаду), -о (трюмо, лібрето), - е (-є) (ательє, резюме), -і (таксі, леді) [16; 134]. In English the majority of nouns have no case opposites.

3.4. In both languages the functions of different case grammemes are different. In Ukrainian only a nominative case grammene can be the subject, only an accusative case grammeme can be a direct object, only a nominative or an instrumental case grammeme is used as a predicative.

In English possessive case grammemes are used almost exclusively as attributes. Common case grammemes fulfil the functions of almost any part of the sentence.

4. Typical combinability of Ukrainian nouns differs from English nouns in the way that it is not connected with articles since such a part of speech is absent within the Ukrainian grammatical system. So, the left-hand connections of the Ukrainian noun are the following: prepositions, adjectives, possessive pronouns (also demonstrative pronouns, some indefinite and negative pronouns). Unlike the English noun the Ukrainian noun cannot be combined with other nouns, forming neither left-hand, nor right-hand connections (compare the so called English noun clusters). The right-hand connections of the Ukrainian noun are uniquely with verbs.

5. The typical syntactic functions of Ukrainian noun mainly coincides with those of the English noun, that is: of a subject, an object, a complement or a predicative, adverbial circumstances. The only exception is that the Ukrainian noun is not used as an attribute.

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