Complete the tree-diagram of the sublcassification of nouns.

SEMINAR 3

THE NOUN (I)

Theoretical comment

Noun as the central nominative lexemic unit of language. Categorial meaning of the noun. Formal characteristics of the noun. Syntactic functions of the noun. The noun as an attribute (“the cannon ball problem”). Grammatically relevant subclasses of the noun: common and proper, animate and inanimate, human and non-human, countable and uncountable, concrete and abstract nouns.

The problem of gender category in English. Gender as a meaningful (natural) category and as a formal (arbitrary) category in different languages. The meaningful character of the gender category in Modern English. Lexical and grammatical gender distinctions. Personal pronouns as gender classifiers of nouns. Gender oppositions and gender classes of nouns: personal and impersonal (neuter) gender, feminine, masculine, and common gender. Oppositional reduction of the gender category; personification.

The category of number. The problem of singular and plural semantics for different groups of nouns. Singular and plural invariables. Oppositional reduction of the category for different groups of nouns.

Practice

1.Present the following as substances. Identify the means by which the corresponding nouns are formed.

Marry, betray, bored, free, act, friendly, play, bring up, attempt, catch, intellectual, weekly, if, rain falls, cut hair, boat tugs.

Complete the tree-diagram of the sublcassification of nouns.

NOUNS

COMMON PROPER

COUNT COLLECTIVE UNCOUNT ANIMATE e.g.…

e.g. ….. …….

…… …….

CONCRETE ABSTRACT MATERIAL ABSTRACT

e.g. …… e.g. …. e.g. …..

………. ……… ……….

………. INANIMATE

e.g. … e.g. …..

……. ……..

……. ……..

INTERGRATING INTEGRATING …………

e.g. crowd DISINTEGRATING e.g. peasantry

army e.g. …… gentry

………… police

3. Form nouns by means of these stem-building affixes. What part of speech does the derivational base belong to?

-age	-ing	-ship	-ant/-ent	-ist
-al	-ion	-ty	-arian	-let
-ancy/-ency	-ism	-th	-ee	-ess
-dom	-ment	-y	-er/-or	-ine
-hood	-ness	-(i)an	-ician	-ette

4. Find feminine equivalents to these masculine gender nouns. What lingual means are used to express gender:

Boy-friend, landlord, lion, drake, sire, bridegroom, stallion, actor, bull-calf, man-producer, master, wizard, baron, bachelor, cock, tom-cat, he-bear, businessman, peacock, widower, hero.

5. It is necessary to distinguish between proper NOUNS and proper NAMES because, although a proper name will consist simply of a proper noun in the most elementary cases like John or Paris, it may also be structurally more complex than such examples. Consider the examples:

1. the University of Cambridge;

2. Cambridge University press;

3. Central Station.

Are they all proper names? Are they all proper nouns? Which of them contain a proper noun? Which don’t?

6. Form the plural of the nouns and refer them to the five columns in the table:

Species, louse, ox, match, axis, nebula, elf, brother, phenomenon, salmon, lady, deer, grandchild, sheep, wife, foot, fish, radio, radius, stratum, maestro, matrix, corpus.

regular productive plurals	suppletive forms	forms with archaic suffixes	forms with borrowed suffixes	forms homonymous with the singular forms

7. Categorize the nouns into three groups:

Army, cavalry, crowd, courage, peace, tongs, advice, peasantry, evidence, family, money, hair, wages, acoustics.

variables	singular invariables	plural invariables

8. Translate the following nouns into Ukrainian (Russian). Compare the number correspondence in the three languages:

Watch, clothes, police, money, knowledge, oats, advice, news, hair.

9. Use the examples below to exemplify how the use of the singular and plural can discriminate the variants of one lexeme or homonymous lexemes. Determine the status of plurality markers as lexical or grammatical:

custom - customs, medium - media, glass – glasses, spectacle - spectacles, damage - damages, fruit - fruits, paper – papers, air- airs, ash - ashes, pain - pains, appointment - appointments, poll - polls, ice - ices, art - arts, slip - slips, part - parts, wage - wages, spade - spades, work - works, respect - res­pects, people - peoples, beauty - beauties, youth - youths, premise – premises.

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