Practice with Common and Proper Nouns

It doesn’t often take much to know which nouns in a sentence are proper nouns, unless the proper noun is the first word in the sentence. Remember – just because it is capitalized does not mean that it is a proper noun! For this reason, most students like to practice determining the kind of noun that is the first word in the sentence.

Grammatical categories of the nouns.

A) Number

The grammatical category of number is the linguistic representation of the objective category of quantity. The number category is realized through the opposition of two form-classes:

the plural form:: the singular form.

There are different approaches to defining the category of number. Thus, some scholars believe that the category of number in English is restricted in its realization because of the dependent implicit grammatical meaning of countableness/uncountableness. The category of number is realized only within subclass of countable nouns, i.e. nouns having numeric (discrete) structure. Uncountable nouns have no category of number, for they have quantitative (indiscrete) structure. Two classes of uncountables can be distinguished: singularia tantum (only singular) and pluralia tantum (only plural). M. Blokh, however, does not exclude the singularia tantum subclass from the category of number. He calls such forms absolute singular forms comparable to the ‘common’ singular of countable nouns.

In Indo-European languages there are lots of nouns that don’t fit into the traditional definition of the category based on the notion of quantity. A word can denote one object, but it has the plural form. Or a noun can denote more than one thing, but its form is singular. There is a definition of the category of number that overcomes this inconsistency. It was worked out by prof. Isachenko. According to him, the category of number denotes marked and unmarked discreteness (not quantity). A word in a singular form denotes unmarked discreteness whether it is a book, or a sheep, or sheep. If an object is perceived as a discrete thing, it has the form of the plural number. Thus, trousers and books are perceived as discrete object whereas a flock of sheep is seen as a whole. This definition is powerful because it covers nearly all nouns while the traditional definition excludes many words.

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:

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

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

c) indiscreteness (нерасчлененность or uncountableness - money, milk).

The plural form may denote:

a) the existence of several objects (cats);

b) the inner discreteness (внутренняя расчлененность, pluralia tantum, jeans).

To sum it up, all nouns may be subdivided into three groups:

1. The nouns in which the opposition of explicit discreteness/indiscreteness is expressed: cat::cats;

2. The nouns in which this opposition is not expressed explicitly but is revealed by syntactical and lexical correlation in the context. There are two groups here:

A. Singularia tantum. It covers different groups of nouns: proper names, abstract nouns, material nouns, collective nouns;

B. Pluralia tantum. It covers the names of objects consisting of several parts (jeans), names of sciences (mathematics), names of diseases, games, etc.

3. The nouns with homogenous number forms. The number opposition here is not expressed formally but is revealed only lexically and syntactically in the context: e.g. Look! A sheep is eating grass. Look! The sheep are eating grass.

B) Case

In present-day linguistics case is used in two senses: 1) semantic, or logic, and 2) syntactic.

The semantic case concept was developed by C. J. Fillmore in the late 1960s. Ch. Fillmore introduced syntactic-semantic classification of cases. They show relations in the so-called deep structure of the sentence. According to him, verbs may stand to different relations to nouns.

There are 6 cases:

1. Agentive Case (A) John opened the door;

2. Instrumental case (I) The key opened the door; John used the key to open the door;

3. Dative Case (D) John believed that he would win (the case of the animate being affected by the state of action identified by the verb);

4. Factitive Case (F) The key was damaged (the result of the action or state identified by the verb);

5. Locative Case (L) Chicago is windy;

6. Objective case (O) John stole the book.

The syntactic case concept dates back to the grammars of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. It is a case whose main role is to indicate a relationship between constituents. To put it otherwise, its role is to indicate a construction in syntax. Thus genitive is a case which marks one noun as dependent on another, e.g. John’s car. The conception of case as a marker of a syntactic relation or a construction can be found in prescriptive, non-structural descriptive and structural descriptive grammars. Prescriptivists spoke of the nominative, the dative, the genitive, the accusative, and the ablative.

H. Sweet’s views (1925) rest on the syntactic conception of case: case to him is a syntactic relation that can be realized syntactically or morphologically. He speaks of inflected and non-inflected cases (the genitive vs. the common case). Non-inflected cases, according to the scholar, are equivalent to the nominative, vocative, accusative, and dative of inflected languages.

O. Jespersen (1933) speaks of the genitive and the common case. Some grammarians (R. W. Pence (1947), H. Whitehall (1965), H. Shaw (1952)) give three cases in English - nominative, genitive (possessive) and accusative (objective). This three-case system, based on the analogy of the form of pronouns, remained extremely popular in the grammars of the 20th century, including some structural grammars (H. Whitehall). H. Whitehall, however, does not reflect the general situation in the school of structural grammar: structuralists at large recognize the existence of two cases - the genitive and the common. Case expresses the relation of a word to another word in the word-group or sentence (my sister’s coat). The category of case correlates with the objective category of possession.

The case category in English is realized through the opposition: The Common Case:: The Possessive Case (sister:: sister’s). However, in modern linguistics the term “genitive case” is used instead of the “possessive case” because the meanings rendered by the “`s” sign are not only those of possession. The scope of meanings rendered by the Genitive Case is the following:

1. Possessive Genitive: Mary’s father – Mary has a father,

2. Subjective Genitive: The doctor’s arrival – The doctor has arrived,

3. Objective Genitive: The man’s release – The man was released,

4. Genitive of origin: the boy’s story – the boy told the story,

5. Descriptive Genitive: children’s books – books for children

6. Genitive of measure and partitive genitive: a mile’s distance, a day’s trip

7. Appositive genitive: the city of London.

To avoid confusion with the plural, the marker of the genitive case is represented in written form with an apostrophe. This fact makes possible disengagement of –`s form from the noun to which it properly belongs. E.g.: The man I saw yesterday’s son, where -`s is appended to the whole group (the so-called group genitive). It may even follow a word which normally does not possess such a formant, as in somebody else’s book. There is no universal point of view as to the case system in English. Different scholars stick to a different number of cases.

1. There are two cases. (limited case theory) The Common one and The Genitive.2. There are no cases at all, the form `s is optional because the same relations may be expressed by the ‘of-phrase’: the doctor’s arrival – the arrival of the doctor;3. There are three cases: the Nominative, the Genitive, the Objective due to the existence of objective pronouns me, him, whom;4. The theory of positional cases.5. The theory of prepositional cases.We adhere to the view that English does possess the category of case, which is represented by the opposition of the two forms - the genitive vs. the non-genitive, or the common. The marked member of the opposition is the genitive and the unmarked the common: both members express a relation - the genitive expresses a specific relation (the relation of possession in the wide meaning of the word) while the common case expresses a wide range of relations including the relation of possession, e.g. Kennedy’s house vs. the Kennedy house. While recognizing the existence of the genitive case, we must say that the English genitive is not a classical case. Its peculiarities are: 1) the inflection -‘s is but loosely connected with the noun (e.g. the Queen of England’s daughter; the man I met yesterday’s son); 2) genitive constructions are paralleled by corresponding prepositional constructions (e.g. Shakespeare’s works vs. the works of Shakespeare); 3) the use of the genitive is mainly limited to nouns denoting living beings; 4) the inflection -‘s is used both in the singular and in the plural (e.g. a boy’s bicycle vs. the boys’ bicycles), which is not typical of case inflexions.

C) Gender

In Indo-European languages the category of gender is presented with flexions. It is not based on sex distinction, but it is purely grammatical. According to some language analysts (B.Ilyish, F.Palmer, andE.Morokhovskaya), nouns have no category of gender in Modern English. Prof. Ilyish states that not a single word in Modern English shows any peculiarities in its morphology due to its denoting male or female being. Thus, the words husband and wife do not show any difference in their forms due to peculiarities of their lexical meaning. The difference between such nouns as actor and actress is a purely lexical one. In other words, the category of sex should not be confused with the category of gender, because sex is an objective biological category. It correlates with gender only when sex differences of living beings are manifested in the language grammatically (e.g. tiger – tigress). Gender distinctions in English are marked for a limited number of nouns. In present-day English there are some morphemes which present differences between masculine and feminine (waiter – waitress, widow – widower). This distinction is not grammatically universal. It is not characterized by a wide range of occurrences and by a grammatical level of abstraction. Only a limited number of words are marked as belonging to masculine, feminine or neuter. The morpheme on which the distinction between masculine and feminine is based in English is a word- building morpheme, not form-building.

Still, other scholars (M.Blokh, John Lyons) admit the existence of the category of gender. Prof. Blokh states that the existence of the category of gender in Modern English can be proved by the correlation of nouns with personal pronouns of the third person (he, she, it). Accordingly, there are three genders in English: the neuter (non-person) gender, the masculine gender, the feminine gender.

The Pronoun

THE PRONOUN is a part of speech which points out objects and their qualities without naming them.

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