Download The theory of word classes in modern grammar studies

THE THEORY OF WORD
CLASSES IN MODERN
GRAMMAR STUDIES
LECTURE 13
13.1. The theory of grammatical
classes of words.
13.2. The English Noun and its
categories.
Ancient India: nouns, verbs, prepositions and
particles. The principle: the meaning could be saved
outside the sentence or lost.
Ancient Greek: noun, verb, conjunctions (articles,
pronouns, links).
Alexandrian grammars: noun, verb, participle, article,
adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction .
Henry Sweet – three main criteria: form, meaning
and function. Parts of speech → into two main
groups: declinable and indeclinable.
Therefore, three basic criteria: meaning,
morphological features and syntactic function in the
sentence.
There are two groups of word classes: notional and
functional words.
The first group comprises the words that have their full
nominative value: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. They
have their own full lexical meaning
The second group includes the words of various syntactic
functions: prepositions, conjunctions, particles, auxiliary
and link verbs.
The functional words serve to point at relations between
the words or to specify grammar meaning of nominal
parts of speech.
Functional words cannot form a sentence. Their function
is to connect the notional words within the sentence.
THE ENGLISH NOUN & CATEGORIES
The noun is one of the main parts of speech.
In combination with the verb it participates in
expressing a predication, the center of the sentence.
Noun can be distinguished by some formal
characteristics with its ‘substance’ or ‘thingness’ as
categorical meaning.
Noun possesses the categories of case, number,
gender and determination.
It has specific word-building affixes (-tion, -ment, sion, -ance/ence, ure, etc.).
Nouns can perform various syntactic functions.
THE ENGLISH NOUN & CATEGORIES
The category of number: countable and uncountable
nouns.
Countables are the nouns that denote a countable
referent (table). regular and irregular plural forms.
Uncountables are treated as the nouns denoting an
uncountable referent (water, glass, love).
Uncountables are the nouns that possess only one form
(singular or plural).
The words that can have only singular form are called
Singularia Tantum,
Nouns of only plural form can be named Pluralia Tantum.
THE ENGLISH NOUN & CATEGORIES
The Singularia Tantum nouns can be the following:
• abstract nouns (luck, love)
• material nouns (water, coffee)
• names of sciences (mathematics, physics)
• collective nouns denoting groups of inanimate
objects (furniture).
The Pluralia Tantum nouns can be the following:
• nouns denoting objects consisting of two halves
(scissors)
• nouns expressing indefinite plurality (cattle, clothes)
• nouns denoting some diseases (measles, mumps).
THE ENGLISH NOUN & CATEGORIES
The category of case.
Case may be defined as the function of the noun in the
utterance or the sentence and its relations to other words
in the phrase or sentence.
Firstly, a theory of positional cases where syntactic
position, or function is identified with case. The noun
distinguishes the inflectional genitive case and four noninflectional, positional cases (Nom.,Voc., Dat., Accus.)
Secondly, theory of prepositional cases, where
prepositional constructions are treated as analytic cases.
The weak point of this theory lies in the unlimited number
of cases as there are numerous prepositions in the
English language.
Thirdly, there are no cases in English.
THE ENGLISH NOUN & CATEGORIES
Forthly, a two-case theory: there are only two cases in the
English noun: nominative and genitive, or possessive.
Only animate nouns are mostly used in genitive case,
while inanimate ones rarely take the form of the genitive
case.
A noun in the genitive case can perform the only function
– attributive.
’ S can be added not only to a noun but to a whole phrase,
e.g., Son and Father’s company.
Phonetically, without semantic environment the noun in
the genitive case is impossible to be distinguished from
the plural form of the noun in pronunciation.
THE ENGLISH NOUN & CATEGORIES
The category of gender.
The category of gender in English is expressed by the obligatory
correlation of nouns with the personal pronouns of the third
person.
Nouns that can express both feminine and masculine person
genders are nouns of the common gender (board, staff, police).
English nouns are capable of showing sex of their referents
lexically, e.g. boy-friend, girl-friend; mister – mistress.
Some words of non-person animate beings reveal their belonging
to the neuter gender via correlation with “it” (lion, lioness).
The category of gender is appropriate only for animate nouns,
while most inanimate nouns don’t have gender description.
There are three ways of expressing sex in English: lexical (a girl),
morphological (a mistress), and syntactical (a girlfriend).
THE ENGLISH NOUN & CATEGORIES
Article determination. The purpose of the determiners (articles, in
particular) is to clarify the nounal referent in a more or less general
way.
The definite article has the meaning of identification or
individualization of the referent expressed by the noun. The article
indicates that the phenomenon or an object is taken in its particular,
individualized property.
The indefinite article is treated as referring the phenomenon
expressed by the noun to a certain class of similar objects,
conveying a classifying generalization of the referent given by the
noun or shows it in a more general way.
The meaningful absence of articles before the countable noun in the
singular signifies that the noun is taken in an abstract sense,
expressing the most general idea of the object denoted, e.g., Law (in
general) begins with the beginning of human society.
THE ENGLISH NOUN & CATEGORIES
The absence of the article before the uncountable noun
corresponds to the two kinds of generalisation: both
relative and absolute, Cf.:
Coffee or tea, please? Vs Coffee stimulates the
function of the heart.
The absence of the article before the countable noun in
the plural corresponds to both kinds of generalisation,
Stars, planets and comets are different celestial
bodies. Vs Wars should be eliminated as means of
deciding international disputes”.