Classification of Word-combinations

General Classification. All word-combinations (WC) can be divided into two general groups on the ground of:

Principle of Form (inner structure, grammatical morphological relations and sequence of elements inside of WC);

Principle of Syntactic Function (behaviour of WC and its elements inside of Sentence).

In accordance to these two principles there are two general types of WC:

Endocentric: combination of words where one or any component can substitute the whole combination in a bigger, extended structure which is Sentence;

Exocentric: combination of words where any component can not substitute the whole WC.

For example:

Endocentric WC:

Poor John; in a sentence it can be replaced by one component: John has already recovered.

John and Marry. It is possible to separate the components: John and Marry ran. = John ran. Marry ran.

Exocentric WC:

John ran. It can not be replaced by one component.

In front of John. The same.

Noun and its main categories

Noun. General characteristics.

The noun is the central lexical unit of language. It is the main nominative unit of speech. the noun can be characterised by three criteria: semantic (the meaning),morphological (the form and grammatical catrgories) and syntactical (functions, distribution).

According to the Semantic features of the noun. nouns can have several subclasses:

proper and common;

animate and inanimate. Animate nouns is divided into human and non-human.

nouns can be countable and uncountable.

In accordance with the morphological structure nouns can be classified into: simple,derived (stem + affix, affix + stem – thingness); compound (stem+ stem – armchair) and composite (the Hague). The noun has morphological categories of number and case.

The noun has certain syntactical characteristics. The main syntactical functions of the noun is the sentence are those of the subject and the object. But it may also be used as an attribute or a predicative. A noun preceded bt a proposition may be used as attribute indirect object and adverbial modifier

The category of gender of the noun is expressed in English through two oppositions: the first the nounsare divided into human and nonhuman. The non-human nouns represent the neuter gender. The lower division of the nouns is into nouns of masculine a feminine genders.

The category of Number is compressed by the opposition of the plural form of the noun to the singular form. The problem is simple with the countable nouns when the plural forms by odding “s” to the singular form of the noun. But the category of number has some pecularities. Just there exist besides common singular and plural so called singularia tantum and pluralia tantum expressing generally the ability of this or that noun to be used only in singular or only in plural. There are also rather many cases when one and the same noun can be used in common singular and/or plural and as absolute singular and/or absolute plural.

Case indicates the relations of the noun to the other words in the sentence T he noun in English has two cases in the paradigm: the common case and the possessive case. The possessive case is formed by ending the “s”, apostrophized to the noun in common case. Traditional name of the possessive case is the genitive case.

The possessive case in English has several semantic types, among which the following are: genitive of possessor, genitive of integer, genitive of agent, genitive of destination, genitive of adverbial, genitive of quantity.

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