Classification of nouns

THEORETICAL ENGLISH GRAMMAR

Outline

1. Language and speech.

2. Morphology and syntax.

3. The aim of theoretical English grammar.

4. Theoretical English grammar general notions.

5. Essentials of Morphology.

6. Parts of speech.

The purpose of this course is to present a systematic study of the grammatical structure of Modern English in the light of general principles of linguistics.

Language and speech

The distinction between language and speech, which was first introduced by the Swiss scholar Ferdinand de Saussure in his book on general linguistics, has since become one of the cornerstones of modern linguistics.

Language incorporates the three constituent parts, each being inherent in it by virtue of its social nature. These parts are the phonological system, the lexical system, the grammatical system. Only the unity of these three elements forms a language; without any one of them there is no human language in the above sense. Thus, it is the source which every speaker and writer has to draw upon if he is to be understood by other speakers of the language.

Speech is the manifestation of language, or its use by various speakers and writers of a given language. Thus, what we have before us, in oral or in written form, as the material for analysis, is always a product of speech. There is no other way for a scholar to get at language than through its manifestation in speech.

Morphology and syntax

The grammatical system is the whole set of regularities determining the combination of naming means in the formation of utterances as the embodiment of thinking process.

Grammar investigates two main divisions: Morphology and Syntax.

Morphology has for its object morphemes, parts of speech, morphological categories. The subject matter of morphology is the grammatical classes and groups of words, their grammatical categories and systems of forms (paradigms) in which these categories actually exist. The word as a grammatical unit has its meaning and form.

Syntax studies word-groups, sentences and syntactic types of their connection. In other words, it examines the ways in which words may be combined and the relationships that exist between the words in a combination.

Syntax has a close relation to morphology because morphological devices are greatly conditioned by syntactical arrangements. It is of great importance to understand the constant reciprocal action of form and function.

The aim of theoretical English grammar.

The grammatical description of language is effected by the science of grammar. Any linguistic description may have a practical or theoretical purpose. A practical description is aimed at providing the student with a manual of practical mastery of the corresponding part of language. As for theoretical linguistic descriptions, they pursue analytical aims and therefore present the studied parts of language in relative isolation, so as to gain insights into their inner structure and expose the intrinsic mechanisms of their functioning. Hence, the aim of practical grammar is to present the rules of using language units in speech, to teach how to speak and write, whereas theoretical grammar expounds and analyses the facts of language not giving any rules.

Thus, the aim of theoretical English grammar of a language is to present a theoretical description of its grammatical system, i.e. to scientifically analyse and define its grammatical categories and study the mechanisms of grammatical formation of utterances out of words in the process of speech making.

Theoretical English grammar general notions.

The general notions of grammar are grammatical category, grammatical meaning, grammatical form; grammatical opposition.

The grammatical category is a system of expressing a generalized grammatical meaning by means of paradigmatic correlation of grammatical forms (inflections or other devices). Grammatical category means the unity of homogeneous grammatical meanings.

The grammatical meaning (e.g. the grammatical number) unites the individual meanings of the correlated paradigmatic forms (e.g. singular – plural) and is exposed through them; hence, the meaning of the grammatical category and the meaning of the grammatical form are related to each other on the principle of the logical relation between the categorical and generic notions.

The grammatical form presents a division of the word on the principle of expressing a certain grammatical meaning. Grammatical form contains morphological means of conveying grammatical meaning.

Grammatical category of number → Grammatical meaning of singular (bag) + Grammatical meaning of plural (bags).

Grammatical category of case → Grammatical meaning of common case (girl) + Grammatical meaning of possessive case (the girl’s bag).

The category of gender → Grammatical meaning of feminine (actress) + Grammatical meaning of masculine (actor).

The ordered set of grammatical forms expressing a categorical function constitutes a paradigm. The paradigmatic correlations of grammatical forms in a category are exposed by the so-called “grammatical oppositions”.

The grammatical opposition may be defined as a generalized correlation of lingual forms by means of which a certain function is expressed. The correlated elements (members) of the opposition must possess two types of features: common features and differential features. Common features serve as the basis of contrast, while differential features immediately express the function in question. The grammatical opposition is formed by a contrastive pair of members in which one member is characterized by the presence of a certain differential feature (“mark”), while the other member is characterized by the absence of this feature. The member in which the feature is present is called the “marked”, or “strong”, or “positive” member, and is commonly designated by the symbol +(plus); the member in which the feature is absent is called the “unmarked”, or “weak”, or “negative” member, and is commonly designated by the symbol –(minus). For instance, the expression of the verbal present and past tenses is based on the grammatical opposition the differential feature of which is the dental suffix -(e)d. This suffix, rendering the meaning of the past tense, marks the past form of the verb positively (we worked), and the present form negatively (we work). So, worked is a strong member of the grammatical opposition, work is a weak member.

Essentials of morphology

Morphemes

The morpheme is one of the central notions of grammatical theory, without which no serious attempt at grammatical study can be made. We can briefly define the morpheme as the smallest meaningful unit into which a word may be divided. E.g.: writers. This form can be divided into three morphemes:

1) writ -, expressing the basic lexical meaning of the word (root morpheme);

2) - er -, expressing the idea of agent performing the action indicated by the root of the verb (affixational morpheme);

3) - s, indicating number, i.e. showing that more than one person of the type indicated is meant (affixational morpheme).

In grammar, we are concerned with the grammatical or structural meaning of morphemes. We do not study the meanings of root morphemes, which are necessarily lexical. Derivation morphemes interest us in so far as they are grammatically relevant, i.e. if they show that the word belongs to a certain part of speech, and if they serve to distinguish one part of speech from another.

E.g.: write v. – writer n.

- er has both grammatical significance (distinguishes a noun from a verb) and lexical meaning (indicates the doer of an action).

Inflection morphemes have no lexical meaning. There is no difference in lexical meaning between - live - and - lived -, - house - and - houses -. It should be noted that there is some confusion in the use of the terms “ suffix ” and “ inflection ”. The term “suffix” is applied to derivational post-root morphemes having lexical meaning. The term “inflection” is applied to every morpheme serving to derive a grammatical form and having no lexical meaning of its own.

Types of word-form derivation

It is common to characterise English as a mainly analytical language. The distinctive features are:

- comparatively few grammatical inflections;

- scarcity of grammatical forms with sound alternations;

- a wide use of prepositions to denote relations between objects and connect words in the sentence;

- a more or less “fixed” or “grammatical” word order to denote grammatical relations.

Analytical types of word-form derivation consist in using a word to express some grammatical category of another word. An analytical form consists of at least two words but actually constitutes one sentence-unit. Only one of the two elements has lexical meaning, the other has none, and being an auxiliary word possesses grammatical (structural) meaning). E.g.:

I am writing

I have been writing

I should write

I should have written

It is written

Synthetical types of word-form derivation consist in changes in the body of the word. The number of morphemes used for deriving word forms in Modern English is very small.

- The ending - s (- es) used to form the plural of almost all nouns.

- The ending - ‘s used to form the genitive (possessive) case of nouns.

- The ending - er and - est used to form degrees of comparison of adjectives and some adverbs.

- The ending - s (- es) for the third person singular Present Simple Indicative.

- The ending - d (- ed) for the Past Simple tense and the Past Participle of regular verbs.

- The ending - ing for the Present Participle and the Gerund.

By sound alterations we mean the way of expressing grammatical categories by changing a sound inside the root. E.g.: m a n – m e n (in nouns); s i ng – s a ng – s u ng (in verbs).

By a suppletive formation we mean building a form of a word from a different stem. E.g.: go – went; good – better.

Parts of speech

Parts of speech are the great classes into which all the words of a language fall. As the basis for the definition of word-classes we must naturally use not only their morphological and word-making characteristics but also their semantic and syntactical features.

Parts of speech must be identified proceeding from:

1) a common categorial meaning of a given class of words abstracted from the lexical meaning of all the words belonging to this class;

2) a common paradigm (form);

3) identity of syntactic function.

To find out what particular class a given English word belongs to we cannot look at one isolated word. Nor is there any flexional ending that is the exclusive property of any single part of speech. E.g.: set: a set – N, to set – V, set – Adj; drink: drinks – N (pl), drinks – V (3^rd p).

There exist different approaches to the definition and classification of parts of speech. Traditionally all parts of speech are divided into:

- notional or fully-lexical parts of speech – noun, adjective, verb, adverb, pronoun, numeral, interjection, particle;

- function words – prepositions, conjunctions.

Some grammar books introduce such parts of speech as the stative, modal words and determiner.

MORPHOLOGY

THE NOUN

Outline

1. General characteristics of the noun.

2. The category of gender.

3. The category of case.

4. The category of number

General characteristics of the noun.

Meaning: The noun as a part of speech has the categorial meaning of “substance” or “thingness”. It is a word which refers to people, things, ideas, feelings, or qualities. It follows from this that the noun is the main nominative part of speech, affecting nomination of the fullest value within the framework of the notional division of the lexicon.

Form: As a part of speech, the noun is also characterized by a set of formal features determining its specific status in the lexical paradigm of nomination. It has its word-building distinctions, including typical suffixes, compound stem models, conversion patterns. It discriminates the grammatical categories of gender, number, case, article determination.

Function:

a) Nouns combine with adjectives (large room), with other nouns (iron bar, father’s hat), with verbs (children play, play games), with prepositions (in a house), with articles (the room, a room).

b) In the sentence, a noun may be the subject or the predicative of the sentence, an object, an attribute, and an adverbial modifier.

The cited formal features taken together are relevant for the division of nouns into several subclasses, which are identified by means of explicit classification criteria. The most general and rigorously delimited subclasses of nouns are grouped into four oppositional pairs.

CLASSIFICATION OF NOUNS

Proper noun – a noun, which is the name of a particular person, place, organization, or building. Proper nouns are always written with a capital letter. E.g.: Peter, England, UNO.

Common nouns – names that can be applied to any individual of a class of persons or things, collections of similar individuals or things regarded as a single unit, materials or abstract notions. E.g.: a table, a student.

Collective nouns refer to a group of people or things. E.g.: family, cattle.

Nouns of material denote material. E.g.: gold, tea, rain.

Abstract nouns refer to a quality, idea, feeling, experience. E.g.: love, beauty.

In theoretical English grammar the first nounal subclass opposition differentiates proper and common nouns. The foundation of this division is “type of nomination”. The second subclass opposition differentiates animate and inanimate nouns on the basis of “form of existence”. The third subclass opposition differentiates huma n and non-human nouns on the basis of “personal quality”. The fourth subclass opposition differentiates countable (count, unit) and uncountable (non-count, mass) nouns on the basis of “quantitative structure”. Count nouns refer to countable things. They have two forms – singular and plural. Non-count nouns usuallyhave only one form. Somewhat less explicitly and rigorously distinguished is the division of English nouns into concrete and abstract.

MORPHOLOGY

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